A security guard, Eric Noble, at the Cincinnati Public Library posted on Facebook and left up for less than a day a meme that was anti-Black Lives Matter protest movement. Noble's mother suggested that he should take it down and he did. The privacy settings on Noble's Facebook page limited the viewings to those less than 100 Facebook friends he had, less than two dozen of which were affiliated with the library. No one at the library contacted him about it or complained to him about it. No library patron complained about the posting. Nevertheless, one (or some) of Noble's co-workers at the library complained about the post to the library's higher-ups and they fired Noble for it.
Noble filed suit and claimed that his First Amendment rights to free speech had been violated by his firing. Although a district court ruling favored the library, the Sixth Circuit reversed that ruling and ordered that judgment be entered for Noble. The case is Noble v. Cincinnati Public Library.
The key issue usually in First Amendment cases like Noble's is whether the employee's right and interest in his free speech outweighs the public employer's (here, the library's) right to suppress and punish it in the interests of trying to assure that what the employee has said or posted doesn't interfere unduly with its capacity to fulfill its role and mission. Too often, this is utilized as a loophole to allow an employer to get away with firing the employee over First Amendment speech.
Here, there was evidence that some in the library's leadership had themselves attended and participated in Black Lives Matter protest marches that occurred after Noble's post was taken down. On the library's own Facebook page it posted a message supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. That's fine and commendable, and as I see it, appropriate, but there was no "evidence that the Library's support of BLM was part of its government mission to lend books and provide other services."
The Sixth Circuit held that "Noble's interest in his speech outweighs the Library's claimed efficiency interest because no evidence indicates that Noble's speech significantly hindered Library operations." Here's the key observation for this conclusion:
... the Library and some of its employees engaged in the same debate as Noble, although on the opposite side: they publicly supported the BLM movement and attended related protestes after Noble shared the meme. That the Library fired Noble for speech expressing a view contrary to the powers-that-be at that institution casts doubt on its motive for firing him and undercuts its workplace harmony interest.
That's correct: freedom of speech isn't only for those that agree with the leaders of a public institution. Surprisingly, Judge John K. Bush, who once called for Nancy Pelosi to be gagged, authored the majority opinion joined by Judge David McKeague. Judge Jeffrey Sutton, as could be expected, ruled for the employer and dissented.
