The Academic Exception to Garcetti: First Amendment Protection for Faculty Speech

Kaden Carr

Edited by Keerthi Chalamalasetty, Jasmine Iyer, Judge Baskin, and Sahith Mocharla

I. Introduction

“A people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

— James Madison, Letter to W. T. Barry, August 4, 1822 [1]

Issued during the early period of American public education, Madison’s pronouncement underscores the importance of free expression as a foundation of democracy. Since their inception, public universities have embodied this principle by providing spaces for rigorous inquiry, debate, and free exchange of ideas. With these goals at heart, public universities play an essential role in equipping citizens with the knowledge to govern themselves thoughtfully and responsibly.

Public universities operate within a delicate balance. Because they rely heavily on state and federal funding, administrators must delicately exercise independence to prevent government influence from interfering with or censoring the content of education [2]. Throughout history, this tenet continues to be tested by campus-based protests, critical scholarship, and social movements. The campaigns for civil rights, opposition to the Vietnam War, as well as the anti-apartheid movement, for example, all pushed the boundaries of free expression at public universities, demonstrating both the promise and the fragility of academic freedom and intellectual independence [3].

This tension persists on public university campuses today. Initiatives such as the Department of Education’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” illustrate the modern stakes: public universities are now facing incentives to impose ideological restrictions on speech in exchange for preferred access to federal funding. By prohibiting “ideologically-driven activism” and demanding “institutional neutrality” on political issues––as defined by the politically elected executive––the compact exemplifies the persistent threat of governmental influence over academic expression [4]. Such pressures make it increasingly urgent to understand the constitutional protections that safeguard faculty speech, even when it challenges prevailing political or institutional agendas.

Academic speech has long been considered a “special concern of the First Amendment”, deserving heightened protection in comparison to speech by other government employees [5]. Courts and scholars alike have historically acknowledged that universities serve a unique role in fostering inquiry, debate, and the pursuit of knowledge. Early decisions, such as Sweezy v. New Hampshire (1957) and Keyishian v. Board of Regents (1967), emphasized that attempts to regulate or punish faculty speech threaten the intellectual independence essential to the university’s mission [6] [7]. Despite this substantial deference given to faculty speech, First Amendment precedent also recognizes universities’ interest in orderly and efficient management, including the potential need to terminate professors on the basis of their speech. The Supreme Court’s decision in Pickering v. Board of Education (1968) established a balancing test between these competing interests [8]. Under Pickering, the government may only restrict employee speech when the employer’s interest in promoting workplace efficiency outweighs the employee’s interest in commenting on matters of public concern. This balancing test required a substantial showing by the government to justify silencing academic speech, and remained the landmark precedent regarding academic speech until a new threshold question was added in 2006.

The Court fundamentally reopened the question of academic speech protections in Garcetti v. Ceballos (2006), which considered whether a public employee’s speech made pursuant to their official duties is protected by the First Amendment [9]. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy  held that when public employees speak pursuant to their job responsibilities, they speak for the government, not as citizens, thereby leaving their speech unprotected. As Justice Kennedy concluded the Court’s opinion, he acknowledged that “expression related to academic scholarship or classroom instruction … are not fully accounted for by this Court’s customary employee-speech jurisprudence” [10]. He then drew an explicit reservation, stating, “We … do not decide whether the analysis we conduct today would apply … to a case involving speech related to scholarship or teaching,” id. With that single sentence, Justice Kennedy acknowledged that the logic of Garcetti – which treats public employee speech as government speech when made pursuant to official duties – might not fit within the distinctive context of the university.

Since Garcetti, lower courts have struggled to interpret that reservation. Some have created meaningful carve-outs which recognize additional constitutional interests in academic speech. Others have read Garcetti strictly, holding that professors are equivalent to other public employees and their scholarship is squarely within the scope of their “official duties,” thus disqualifying their speech from First Amendment protection. These varied interpretations have created a growing circuit split – and with it, a deep uncertainty about the safeguards enjoyed by public faculty speech. 

This uncertainty carries heavy consequences for public university faculty. Under circuits which have adopted a strict interpretation of Garcetti, professors risk discipline or termination for ‘controversial’ research, classroom discussions, or public commentary on their own university. When the boundaries of protection remain unclear, self-censorship may become the safest course for faculty across the country. 

II. Constitutional Foundations of Academic Freedom

Academic freedom at public universities – the right for faculty to teach, speak, and produce scholarship on matters of public controversy and debate – plays a unique role in the proliferation of ideas. Beyond citizens’ common interest in free expression, academic contexts often involve the most cutting-edge opinions, methods, and approaches to understanding complex social, scientific, and political questions. 

The Court made this distinction clear in Sweezy v. New Hampshire [11]. Paul Sweezy, a Marxist economist and visiting lecturer at the University of New Hampshire was questioned about the content of his lectures, beliefs, and political affiliations under the authority of the state’s Subversive Activities Control Act – a piece of McCarthy era legislation intended to aid investigation into potential communist organizing [12]. Sweezy refused to answer questions regarding the content of his lectures and in-class instruction as he argued the state had no authority to demand disclosure of his academic instruction. The Court later formally decided 6–3 in favor of Sweezy on Fourteenth Amendment due process grounds; however, the majority opinion discussed the implications for freedom of speech resulting from Sweezy’s refusal to disclose the content of his lectures when questioned by investigators. In dicta, Justice Frankfurter emphasized that, “political power must abstain from intrusion into this activity of freedom” as the role of the university is to examine and question traditional ideas and beliefs [13]. In the face of Red Scare political persecution, the Court’s decision in Sweezy affirmed the importance of academic freedom outweighing the government’s interest in efficient and orderly management of university education, even when the content of speech is highly controversial. While the holding in Sweezy did not itself create controlling First Amendment precedent, it provided future Courts a persuasive foundation for further protections.

The Supreme Court built upon this foundation a decade later in Keyishian v. Board of Regents (1967), where it moved from broadly acknowledging academic freedom to constitutionalizing it [14]. In Keyishian, the Court confronted a New York loyalty-oath regime strikingly similar to the McCarthy-era investigations at issue in Sweezy, but this time decided the case squarely on First Amendment grounds. The case was brought by five faculty members of State University of New York at Buffalo, including Harry Keyishian. The university offered Keyishian a promotion conditioned on signing a certificate affirming he had no communist affiliations. When he declined to sign the certificate, the university did not renew his contract. Several of his colleagues joined in a lawsuit, challenging both the loyalty-oath requirement and the broader statutory framework. Their claims argued that the laws punished mere membership without requiring proof of intent or illegal action; that the definition of “subversive” activity was unclear; and that conditioning academic employment on ideological conformity exerted a profound chilling effect on teaching and scholarship. SUNY Buffalo argued that as an employer, it had wide latitude to define the conditions of employment, including acting on its compelling interest in preventing “subversive” influences within higher education. In a 5–4 decision, The Supreme Court found in favor of Keyishian and his fellow faculty members.  The Court held that academic freedom is a “special concern of the First Amendment” that does not tolerate laws which cast a “pall of orthodoxy over the classroom,” marking a doctrinal shift toward explicit constitutional protection for the free exchange of ideas in the university [15].

Although the Court in Sweezy and Keyishian framed its analysis in terms of balancing national-security concerns against the university’s interest in free intellectual inquiry, the enduring legacy of both decisions lies in their recognition of academic freedom as a constitutional value of the highest importance. This value came into the context of public employment in Pickering v. Board of Education (1968), where the Court considered the protections of public faculty’s speech in their role as employees of a public institution [16]. Marvin Pickering, a high school teacher, was an employee of the Township High School District in Illinois. Pickering wrote a letter to the local newspaper criticizing the district’s allocation of bond funds and their failure to properly fund school programs which he viewed as essential. After learning about the publication of the letter, Township High School District terminated Pickering, asserting that his public criticism of the district was disruptive to the efficient operation of the schools. Pickering sued, claiming that his First Amendment right to express discontent with the district’s policy had been violated. The Supreme Court eventually decided 8–1 in favor of Pickering, crafting a balance test between (i) the government’s interest in efficient and orderly operations and (ii) the public employee’s interest in speech commenting on matters of public concern. The court applied this test to Pickering’s alleged disruption and found there was no material effect on school operations. Instead, the Court ruled that Pickering’s freedom to express his concerns outweighed the potential effects cited by the government. It is important to note that the court’s decision came from an educational context, but applied its holding more broadly to all public employment. The Court’s decision in Pickering left the key precedent that government employees – including university faculty, simply by virtue of their public employment, do not forfeit their right to free speech. Instead, a substantial showing is required by the public employer to demonstrate disruption to effective and orderly operations if they wish to terminate or otherwise punish an employee on the basis of the content of their speech.

III. The Decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos

The Court’s decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos (2006) was the most consequential shift in public-employee speech doctrine since establishing its original balancing test in Pickering [17]. In Garcetti, the Court held that public employee’s speech, when made pursuant to their official duties, is not protected as citizen speech by the First Amendment. This created a new threshold question before the Pickering test, and in many interpretations, acts as a categorical disqualification from First Amendment protection for public employees in contexts defined as within the “official duties” of their position. Although the holding now implicates public university employees, it was decided in a starkly different context.

Richard Ceballos, a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney, investigated a defense attorney’s claim that a police affidavit used to obtain a search warrant contained misrepresentations. Concluding that the affidavit was indeed misleading in ways material to the warrant, Ceballos disclosed his findings and later testified for the defense about the inaccuracies.After several adverse employment actions, which Ceballos viewed as retaliation for his investigation and testimony, he filed a federal lawsuit alleging a violation of his First Amendment rights [18].

The case reached the Supreme Court, which identified Pickering as the principal governing precedent. Rather than immediately applying the traditional balancing test, the Court focused on Pickering’s threshold requirement that a public employee speak “as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern” [19]. In this definitional determination, the Court held that when a public employee’s speech is made “pursuant to [the employee’s] official duties,” the employee remains open to discipline because the speech is categorically different from citizen speech; instead, it is made on behalf of the government [20]. In Ceballos’s case, this meant that because the creation of memorandums, such as the one he used to advise his supervisor about the alleged misconduct, was considered pursuant to his “official duties,” he did not speak as a “citizen” as required by Pickering. The Court reasoned that limiting speech pursuant to “official duties” only regulates speech which the public employer has “commissioned or created” while still permitting public employees to speak in separate instances as citizens with full First Amendment protection. The Court declined to “articulate a comprehensive framework” to determine whether speech is within the bounds of a public employee’s “official duties.” Instead, the Court emphasized the need for a practical review in each case based on the particular job requirements and expectations. Despite this aversion of a specific framework, the Court did note that “official duties” often expand outside what is explicitly written in a job description as they “bear little resemblance to the duties an employee actually is expected to perform” [21][22]. This led courts to consider Garcetti as a new threshold question in cases involving First Amendment protections for public employees. Courts would first analyze (a) whether or not speech was made pursuant to official duties, before (b) applying the Pickering weighing the government’s interest in efficient and orderly operations against the public employee’s interest in speech commenting on matters of public concern.

In dissent, Justice Souter criticized the lack of nuance in the broad application of this holding to all public employees. He draws out the implication that this “ostensible domain beyond the pale of the First Amendment” could even include speech made by a public university professor. Further, he warns that even limited interpretations of “official duties” in the context of academic speech would certainly include giving lectures, writing scholarly literature, and collaborating with academic peers on behalf of a university, and therefore lose protection. Justice Souter cites Sweezy and Keyishian to suggest a strong deference toward academic freedom which in his view, the majority has overlooked in their broad application of Garcetti’s holding to all public employees.

Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion in Garcetti addressed these concerns with an open question. With an acknowledgement that “academic scholarship” may “implicate(s) additional constitutional interests,” Justice Kennedy explicitly decided to reserve the opportunity for later courts to determine the applicability of Garcetti’s holding in a “case involving speech related to scholarship or teaching.” Given the brevity – only three sentences of the majority decision – addressing the unique context of academic speech, there have been wide variations in the applications of Garcetti.

IV. The Evolving Circuit Split

Since Garcetti reshaped the landscape of academic freedom protections under the First Amendment, the federal circuit courts generated a fragmented body of precedent, each developing its own approach to the question the Supreme Court abstained from resolving: How does Garcetti apply in the context of academic speech? The circuit courts have divided largely into two categories: those that apply Garcetti strictly, treating public university faculty as equivalent to other public employees, and those that recognize an exception to Garcetti grounded in the distinctive constitutional interests at stake in academic speech.

The Seventh Circuit’s decision in Renken v. Gregory (2008) adopted a strict interpretation of Garcetti in the context of public university faculty [23]. The plaintiff, Dr. William Renken, was a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who complained to university administrators regarding the use of research funds. After Renken expressed these concerns, the university responded by reassigning him away from his research project and removing his administrative responsibilities related to the funds. Renken sued on the basis that these actions were retaliation against his First Amendment-protected speech. When the case reached the Seventh Circuit, the court concluded that Renken’s speech – his complaints about the allocation of grant funds – was “pursuant to his official duties” as an administrator responsible for managing grant funds. In line with the holding of Garcetti, the circuit court concluded that because his speech fell within the “official duties” of his employment, his speech was not protected citizen speech under the First Amendment. The Seventh Circuit followed Garcetti’s reasoning that the “official duties” of an employee’s position are not strictly limited to the responsibilities listed in a contract or job description. The circuit court interpreted Renken’s faculty responsibilities to manage grants, conduct research, and oversee academic projects as “official duties” thus disqualifying his complaints from protection. 

The Second Circuit adopted a similar approach in Weintraub v. Board of Education (2010) [23]. Although David Weintraub was a public school teacher rather than a university professor, his claim still parallels precedent involving public employees who speak about matters tied to their academic speech. The analogy is imperfect, as the case implicates a distinct doctrinal line governing “grade school” speech – a body of precedent that treats K–12 educators differently from university faculty because of the unique managerial and pedagogical interests at play [24]. Regardless, Garcetti is still implicated as K–12 educators fall within the umbrella of “public employees.” In Weintraub, the teacher complained through his union that the school district failed to discipline a disruptive student. He alleged that the district retaliated against him for his complaints, culminating in his termination. Weintraub sued, claiming the First Amendment protected his complaints. When the case arrived at the Second Circuit, the court applied Garcetti with a broad definition of “official duties.” The court found that Weintraub’s speech – his complaints to district administration and his union – were “part-and-parcel” of his duties to maintain classroom discipline [25]. In response to Garcetti’s distinction between citizen and public employee speech, the Second Circuit emphasized the lack of a “civilian analogue” to Weintraub’s speech [26]. The circuit court reasoned that because Weintraub’s speech was through means only available to him as a result of his employment – internal communication with his administrators and union – it could not be in his capacity as a citizen. This significantly broadens the scope of “official duties” in Garcetti by inquiring into the form and forum of speech. Under this analysis, if an employee speaks through a mechanism unavailable to the general population, regardless of its content, their speech is disqualified from First Amendment protections. This creates a unique tension with academic speech, which often has no civilian analogue. Common practices like peer review, in-class instruction, and any other role specific to teaching could justify separating a public faculty member’s speech from the general population.

Both Renken and Weintraub illustrate the expansive restrictions resulting from a strict application of Garcetti. By broadly defining “official duties,” both circuits leave little room for First Amendment protection in academic settings. This interpretation threatens to collapse the entirety of academic speech into the definition of employee speech generally, disqualifying it entirely from First Amendment protection. Yet not all circuits have embraced this approach. Several courts have rejected a strict reading of Garcetti in favor of an exception for academic speech founded in the Supreme Court’s recognition that additional constitutional interests may be of concern in the context of academic freedom.

The Fourth Circuit took this approach in Adams v. Trustees of the University of North Carolina–Wilmington (2011) [27]. Mike Adams, a criminology professor, was denied a promotion allegedly due to his public commentary in columns, books, and speaking engagements regarding controversial political issues. Adams sued, claiming a violation of his First Amendment rights. When the case reached the Fourth Circuit, the court opted for a narrow definition of “official duties,” which did not include general applications of professional expertise. The court emphasized that teaching and commentary on topics within one’s area of professional expertise does not immediately qualify as “official duties” in Garcetti’s terms. Instead, the Fourth Circuit deferred heavily in favor of preserving academic freedom based on the Supreme Court’s reservation of the issue in combination with Justice Souter’s explicit reference to the elevated status of academic speech. After refusing to apply the categorical disqualification presented in Garcetti, the Fourth Circuit proceeded to a Pickering balance test. While Adams showed deference in principle to academic freedom, it did not take the step of crafting a new doctrinal exception.

The Ninth Circuit was more willing than other courts to formalize an academic exception in Demers v. Austin (2014) [28]. David Demers, a tenured professor at Washington State University, circulated a proposed “Seven-Step Plan” pamphlet – outlining a substantial restructuring of his college’s Communications program. The plan addressed issues of curricular design, departmental governance, and allocation of academic resources—speech at the core of faculty participation in university decision-making. Demers alleged that university administrators responded with a pattern of retaliation, including negative performance evaluations and impediments to his academic progress, prompting him to file a First Amendment retaliation suit.

Unlike the Seventh and Second Circuits, the Ninth Circuit took this opportunity to confront the applicability of Garcetti directly in the academic context and to evaluate it against the Supreme Court’s academic freedom jurisprudence. The court’s analysis was explicit: Garcetti could not be mechanically extended to university faculty without undermining constitutional principles the Supreme Court had long recognized. As the Ninth Circuit explained, “if applied to teaching and academic writing, Garcetti would directly conflict with the important First Amendment values previously articulated by the Supreme Court.” In particular, the court drew on Sweezy and Keyishian, emphasizing that the Supreme Court had repeatedly characterized academic freedom as essential to the university’s constitutional role in fostering knowledge and democratic inquiry.

The Ninth Circuit reasoned that academic speech is categorically different from other forms of public employee speech because the “official duties” of university faculty are themselves expressive. Scholarship, teaching, internal curricular proposals, and professional governance are not merely workplace tasks – they are the mechanisms by which faculty contribute to the creation and dissemination of knowledge. The court found that faculty speech was of particular First Amendment importance and applying Garcetti would impose the kind of “strait jacket” contemplated in Sweezy [29]. This would be incompatible with the Supreme Court’s insistence that universities serve as centers for free inquiry, where ideas may be expressed without fear of reprisal.

Recognizing this incompatibility, the Ninth Circuit announced a formal doctrinal carve-out: “there is an exception to Garcetti for teaching and academic writing” [30]. In place of Garcetti, the court applied the Pickering balancing test to determine whether Demers’s speech addressed matters of public concern and whether his interest in that speech outweighed the university’s administrative interests. In doing so, the Ninth Circuit not only protected Demers’s speech but also articulated the clearest judicial recognition to date that academic speech occupies a constitutionally distinct category – one that cannot be assimilated to ordinary public employee expression without eroding the First Amendment’s “special concern” for academic freedom. Demers effectively re-centered academic freedom as a constitutional category in its own right, and remains the only circuit-level doctrinal exception in force.

V. Proposed Academic Exemption

The enduring lesson of the Supreme Court’s academic freedom jurisprudence is that universities occupy a constitutionally distinctive place in American life. From Sweezy to Keyishian, the Court has recognized that the free exchange of ideas within institutions of higher learning is not merely an individual entitlement, but a structural prerequisite for democratic self-governance. This recognition rested on the principle that intellectual inquiry thrives only when insulated from the coercive influence of the state – particularly when faculty speech challenges prevailing political, social, or institutional norms. Pickering later extended this constitutional protection into the public-employment context, permitting discipline only when the government demonstrates that its managerial interests outweigh the employee’s interest in contributing to public discourse.

This constitutional concern is no longer theoretical. As contemporary political actors increasingly condition public funding on ideological conformity, the unresolved scope of Garcetti poses an acute threat to academic independence. When legislatures or executive agencies may reward or penalize universities, or their professors, based on perceived political neutrality, the question of whether faculty speech is protected as citizen expression becomes dispositive. In this environment, the doctrinal ambiguity surrounding Garcetti determines whether public universities remain sites of independent inquiry or become instruments of state-sanctioned orthodoxy.

The stability created by Pickering was disrupted when Garcetti v. Ceballos introduced a categorical rule excluding speech made pursuant to an employee’s “official duties” from First Amendment protection. In many interpretations, Garcetti acts as a prior threshold test for courts to consider before proceeding to Pickering analysis. Although the Court expressly declined to decide whether this rule applied to “speech related to scholarship or teaching,” the uncertainty created by that unresolved question has fractured the circuits. Some courts, treating faculty as indistinguishable from other public employees, have held that the everyday work of professors – teaching, writing, and participating in academic governance – is categorically unprotected. Other circuits, relying on the Supreme Court’s repeated acknowledgment of the constitutional interests uniquely implicated in academic expression, have rejected this approach and preserved meaningful space for faculty speech outside Garcetti’s reach.

Under such an interpretation, the state’s leverage over public universities expands dramatically. Because teaching, research, and curricular design may be construed to constitute a professor’s ‘official duties,’ the government may effectively regulate the substance of academic knowledge by threatening discipline or funding withdrawal. In periods of political polarization, this authority enables precisely the form of ideological supervision the Supreme Court warned against in Keyishian – not through overt loyalty oaths, but through administrative retaliation justified as routine employment oversight.

The divergence unveils a deeper tension in the doctrine: academic speech cannot be treated as routine workplace output without erasing the very freedoms the First Amendment has long regarded as indispensable to the university’s mission. Because a professor’s “official duties” consist precisely of generating, evaluating, and disseminating ideas, applying Garcetti in this domain would invert the constitutional design by giving the state comprehensive authority over the content of knowledge production. The modern governance of higher education amplifies this danger. Unlike earlier eras, governmental influence over universities today is frequently exercised through indirect mechanisms – funding formulas, accreditation standards, performance metrics, and speech-based compliance regimes [31]. When faculty expression falls within Garcetti’s categorical exclusion, these mechanisms operate without constitutional constraint. The result is not merely individual retaliation, but structural self-censorship, as scholars avoid inquiry that may jeopardize political favorability.

A coherent doctrine requires an exception aligned with both history and principle. Academic speech – whether expressed in teaching, scholarship, or participation in academic governance – should be categorically exempt from Garcetti and evaluated under the Pickering balancing test. This rule best harmonizes the government’s interest in managing its institutions with the First Amendment’s special concern for cultivating spaces where ideas may be pursued without fear of retaliation. By restoring Pickering as the governing standard for academic expression, courts can preserve the intellectual independence essential to the functioning of public universities and, by extension, to the health of democratic society.

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[1] James Madison, Letter to W. T. Barry (Aug. 4, 1822), in 9 The Writings of James Madison 103, 103–09 (Gaillard Hunt ed., N.Y., G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1910).

[2] Bellwether, Dollars and Degrees: A Policy Roadmap for Strengthening College Value (Apr. 2024), https://bellwether.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/DollarsAndDegrees_1_Bellwether_April2024.pdf

[3] Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), An American Tradition: The History of Student Movements in the U.S., https://ca.cair.com/updates/an-american-tradition-the-history-of-student-movements-in-the-u-s/.

[4] Knight First Amendment Inst., A Brief Legal Analysis of the Department of Education’s Proposed Compact for Higher Education, https://knightcolumbia.org/blog/a-brief-legal-analysis-of-the-department-of-educations-proposed-compact-for-higher-education.

[5] Keyishian v. Bd. of Regents, 385 U.S. 589 (1967)

[6] Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234 (1957)

[7] See [5]

[8] Pickering v. Bd. of Educ., 391 U.S. 563 (1968)

[9] Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410 (2006)

[10] Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410, 425 (2006).

[11] See [6]

[12] N.H. Laws 1953, ch. 307.

[13] Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234, 262 (1957) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).

[14] See [5][15] Keyishian v. Bd. of Regents, 385 U.S. 589, 603 (1967)

[16] See [8]

[17] See [9]

[18] Perry Grossman, Op-Ed: Public Employee Speech in the Aftermath of Garcetti, N.Y. L.J., https://www.nyclu.org/commentary/op-ed-public-employee-speech-aftermath-garcetti-new-york-law-journal.

[19] Pickering v. Bd. of Educ., 391 U.S. 563, 568 (1968)

[20] Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410, 421 (2006)

[21] Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410, 424–25 (2006).

[22] Jill M. Zeman, Note, The Demise of the Public Concern Doctrine: The Threat to Public Employees’ First Amendment Right to Free Speech, 35 J.C. & U.L. 75 (2008), https://www.nacua.org/docs/default-source/jcul-articles/volume35/35_jcul_75.pdf?sfvrsn=7db989bf_12.

[23] Renken v. Gregory, 541 F.3d 769 (7th Cir. 2008).

[23] Weintraub v. Bd. of Educ., 593 F.3d 196 (2d Cir. 2010).

[24] National Education Association, The First Amendment – Protections for Educators, NEA (Apr. 3, 2023), https://www.nea.org/resource-library/first-amendment-protections-educators.

[25] Weintraub v. Bd. of Educ., 593 F.3d 196, 203 (2d Cir. 2010)

[26] Weintraub v. Bd. of Educ., 593 F.3d 196, 204 (2d Cir. 2010)

[27] Adams v. The Trustees of the University of North Carolina–Wilmington, 640 F.3d 550 (4th Cir. 2011).

[28]  Demers v. Austin, 746 F.3d 402 (9th Cir. 2014)

[29] Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234, 250 (1957) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).

[30] Demers v. Austin, 746 F.3d 402, 25-26 (9th Cir. 2014)

[31] Jerry C. Edwards, Federal Funding Restrictions, Academic Research, and the First Amendment, 114 Geo. L.J. Online 32 (2025), https://www.law.georgetown.edu/georgetown-law-journal/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2025/10/federal_funding_restrictions.pdf