...or, "Objection, your honor, cuz now you're just being a great big showoff."
Or, I'm Judge Easterbrook and you see those bookshelves? Shelves and shelves of books, and I've read EVERY DANG ONE of them!
Deborah Mayer taught elementary school for a year in Monroe County, IN.
One day, a kid asked if she'd ever gone to a demonstration.
Well, teacher said, one time I was in my car driving past a demonstration, and I saw someone with a sign that said, "Honk for peace." So I honked.
Parents complained.
Even before we come to the irritating Seventh Circuit opinion, we must pause to smack ourselves on the forehead.
Mom: How was school today, Susie?
Susie: [Thinking about Britney Spears's MySpace page] Fine.
Mom: What did you learn?
Susie: Nothing. Pass the potatoes.
Mom's new live-in boyfriend: Pass the potatoes, WHAT?
Susie: [Thinking, You're NOT my dad, butthole] Pass the potatoes, PUH-LEEZE.
Mom: Oh, come on. You must have learned SOMETHING.
Susie: Mom, did you ever "honk for peace?"
Mom: I certainly have NOT! Where did you ever hear of such a thing?! ...And you can pretty much take it from there yourself.
Now that protestor in the pic looks mighty cold, but save the "chill" puns, because Ms. Mayer never had a First Amendment right to shoot off her honking, peaceniky mouth in the first place.
This is not just because of the U.S. Supreme Court's controversial ruling last year in a case called Garcetti.
That case was about a prosecutor who claimed his office retaliated against him for doing (what we would consider) the right thing about (what we would consider) a sloppy warrant application containing (what we would consider) lies, lies, lies by the police.
Result: Prosecutor loses, no first-amendment protection. Take that, you scrupulously-ethical bum! Whyncha just go honk for peace?
According to the achingly-erudite chief judge at the appellate court here, it's all old news that pre-dates Garcetti by a decade and a half, and here's the reasoning:
...[T]he school system does not "regulate" teachers' speech as much as it hires that speech. Expression is a teacher's stock-in-trade, the commodity she sells to her employer in exchange for her salary.
[Emphasis added.] This must be what they mean when they talk about the economic analysis of law.
But that's just the warmup for the great-big-showoffy-part:
...[A] high-school teacher hired to explicate Moby Dick in a literature class can't use Cry, The Beloved Country, even if Paton's book better suits the instructor's style and point of view; a math teacher can't decide that calculus is more important than trigonometry and decide to let Hipparchus and Ptolemy* slide in favor of Newton and Leibniz.
See what I mean? Doesn't he just bug you? Shelves-n-shelves o' books, an' read every DANG one of them!
Bright side? (I guess.) Kicking Ms. Mayer and her honking, peaceniky bootie to the curb also lets you keep homophobic whackos from stalking their gay students in the hallways with hate literature.
*Nota bene: NOT "[Spitting noise]! Lemmy!"
Tags: politics, law, policy, education, education policy, public schools, litigation, appellate litigation, appellate practice, Seventh Circuit, First Amendment, Deborah Mayer, Bloomington, Indiana, Mayer v. Monroe County Community School Corporation, Monroe County, Indiana, Easterbrook, Judge Frank Easterbrook, Britney Spears, Thandie Newton, Sir Isaac Newton, Leibniz, Motorhead, Lemmy, Lemmy Kilmister, "The Head Cat", metal, "Honk for Peace", protest, Iraq war.
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