Lane v. Franks

Description:  Central Alabama Community College fired a staff member after a federal court subpoenaed him to testify in a lawsuit concerning fraud by a state legislator. The college claimed that the staff member was speaking as an employee at the trial, and because he did not say what the college wanted him to say, it fired him. The employee, Edward Lane, contended that he was speaking truthfully outside of the workplace on a matter of public concern. Lane was the director of the college’s after-school program for at-risk youth when he discovered that the senator was drawing a salary from the program but wasn’t doing any work.

Attorney sound bite:  David Hacker

The following quote may be attributed to Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Legal Counsel David Hacker regarding the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous decision Thursday in Lane v. Franks, which affirmed that the First Amendment protects the speech of public employees outside the workplace on matters of public concern:

“No one should be fired or suffer other kinds of retaliation for speech outside the workplace, especially when that person is testifying truthfully in court, as Mr. Lane was. We see all too often that public universities and colleges place political litmus tests on employees. But as the Supreme Court has affirmed once again, Americans do not lose their First Amendment freedoms when they accept a government job.”

 

• ADF friend-of-the-court brief: Lane v. Franks

 

Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization that advocates for the right of people to freely live out their faith.

 

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