New York Times
June 19th, 2014
WASHINGTON — The First Amendment protects government employees from retaliation for giving truthful testimony that was not part of their job responsibilities, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
The case involved Edward R. Lane, a former director of a youth program at a public community college in Alabama, who was fired after giving trial testimony in a public corruption trial.
“It would be antithetical to our jurisprudence,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the court, “to conclude that the very kind of speech necessary to prosecute corruption by public officials — speech by public employees regarding information learned through their employment — may never form the basis for a First Amendment retaliation claim.”