WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case of a Massachusetts teacher who was fired over conservative social media posts she had made before taking her job in a case conservative Justice Clarence Thomas says raises “serious concerns” about a lower court’s approach to the First Amendment.
As summarized by Thomas’ statement, MacRae v. Matteos concerns former Hanover Public Schools teacher Kari MacRae, who was fired for having shared six internet memes on TikTok in her capacity as a private citizen before being employed by the district.
One concerned the Biden administration’s gender-confused former U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Richard “Rachel” Levine, described as an “obese man who thinks he’s a woman” and therefore a poor choice for an “expert on mental health”; a lamentation about how gender ideology has complicated teaching children about “the birds and the bees”; a satirical “retirement plan” consisting of becoming an illegal immigrant and receiving government benefits; and a Thomas Sowell quote about liberals’ use of false “racism” accusations.
The district claimed her posts would have a negative, “disruptive” impact on student learning, citing the local media attention they had received. A District Court and the First Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, prompting MacRae to appeal to the nation’s highest court, alleging a violation of her right to free speech.
Heritage Foundation legal expert Thomas Jipping explained to the Daily Signal that the Court unanimously agreed not to hear her case because the particular legal argument she chose was to challenge the validity of one of the Court’s balancing tests for free speech claims, which would have put numerous other precedents at risk. “The outcome might have been different had she argued that the lower court did not apply the test properly in her case,” he said.
Thomas concurred with that decision but said he felt compelled to write his own statement to register his disapproval of the “deeply flawed” way in which the First Circuit handled the case.
“To start, I do not see how the tone of MacRae’s posts can bear on the weight of her First Amendment interest,” he wrote, citing precedents establishing that tone, presentation, and even hurtfulness are irrelevant to whether speech is “on matters of public concern.”
“The First Circuit’s analysis of respondents’ countervailing interest in avoiding disruption is similarly questionable,” Thomas continued. “Although this Court has ‘consistently … given substantial weight to government employers’ reasonable predictions of disruption,’ the key word here is ‘reasonable’ (…) The First Circuit accordingly should have discarded factors whose disruptive potential was purely speculative,” and especially “illicit” factors such as the district’s interpretation of Hanover’s ‘Core Value of ‘(r)espect(ing) … human differences’ as evidence of potential disruption.”
“Whatever the proper weight of respondents’ interest in minimizing disruption, the First Circuit failed to conduct a proper balancing inquiry because it improperly discounted MacRae’s First Amendment interest,” Thomas declared.
“(R)ather than raise these broader issues, MacRae’s petition focuses on the discrete question whether the framework’s balancing test applies at all in the context of a public employee’s ‘unrelated, preemployment speech,’” Thomas concluded. “Because I agree with the Court that this question does not independently warrant review, I concur in the denial of certiorari. In an appropriate case, I would make clear that public employers cannot use Pickering-Garcetti balancing generally or unsupported claims of disruption in particular to target employees who express disfavored political views.”
The current Supreme Court is often unpredictable on conservative and pro-family goals despite six of its nine current members having been appointed by the GOP, including three by President Donald Trump alone.
The Court has delivered conservatives major victories on gun rights, environmental regulation, affirmative action, and, most significantly, abortion with the overturn of Roe v. Wade, but it has also issued dismissive rulings on COVID-19 vaccine mandates, religious freedom, and LGBT ideology to the point that conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch have taken the rare step of criticizing Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh for lacking the “fortitude” to resolve such issues.
