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This is a current Supreme Court case that centers around the "fair share" issue

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This is a current Supreme Court case that centers around the "fair share" issue

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"Abood v. Detroit Board of Education in 1977, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that no one can be forced to join a public employees’ union. But the court held that non-union members can be required to pay the share of the union dues."

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A case before the U.S. Supreme Court is an "assault on the freedoms of working people to earn a better life for themselves and their families," argue educators in a brief filed with the court Jan. 19.

The case, Janus v. A FSCME, Council 31, is the latest attempt to have the court rule, contrary to long-established precedent, that non-union members who share in the wages, benefits and protections that have been negotiated in a collectively bargained contract are not required to pay their fair share for the cost of those negotiations. Janus follows decades of attacks by corporate special interests on the right of employees to join together for economic opportunity. Janus is funded by the National Right to Work Committee and the Liberty Justice Center. Both groups are part of a network funded by billionaires such as the Koch brothers and and other corporate CEOs who do not believe that working people deserve the same freedoms they have: to negotiate a fair return on their work.

Lily Eskelsen García, a sixth grade teacher and president of the National Education Association, which along with the American Association of University Professors filed the amicus brief, said:

Strong unions help to create strong schools for students and even stronger communities that benefit all of us. For generations, unions have been the best path to the middle class for working people, especially people of color and women. But in this rigged economy, unions are under attack, and those attacks are coming not just from the White House and Capitol Hill. They're happening at the ballot box and at the Supreme Court with cases like Janus v. AFSCME.

According to The Guardian magazine, the lawsuit represents an orchestrated, nationwide campaign by conservative special interests to "defund and defang" unions representing public service employees. "A network of conservative thinktanks with outposts in all 50 states has embarked on a "breakthrough" campaign designed to strike a "mortal blow," states the article.

"This case is part of a broader effort to weaken the freedom and power of working people, undermine public services, and to erode the common good. The Supreme Court should consider the benefits of robust collective bargaining and unionization for public employers, employees and the general public, including improved government services, better educational outcomes and higher economic mobility," said Risa Lieberwitz, AAUP's general counsel. "The court also should not ignore the fact that many of the groups who filed briefs in support of Janus only want to manipulate and weaponize the court's decision to attack unions and deprive state and local governments of broad societal benefits that accompany collective bargaining."

Eskelsen García added, "The politically-motivated backers behind Janus know this case is nothing more than a smokescreen for what they're really trying to do. Point blank, this case is an assault on the freedoms of working people to earn a better life for themselves and their families. The case's backers are attempting to write the rules further in favor of their own special corporate interests and other billionaires. The justices on the Supreme Court cannot allow themselves to be fooled."

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case Monday, February 26. A decision is expected by June.

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Educators press Supreme Court to rule against case that attacks worker freedoms, unions - Education Votes

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A case before the U.S. Supreme Court is an "assault on the freedoms of working people to earn a better life for themselves and their families," argue educators in a brief filed with the court Jan. 19. The case, Janus v.

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Teacher suspended for Facebook rant may have had 1st Amendment rights violated.

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Katheryn Tucker |

"Michael Insalaca is partially paralyzed because the defendants put him in a seat they knew could injure and possibly kill him," Chris Glover of Beasley Allen said.

A half-dozen professors from three Georgia universities have sued Gov. Nathan Deal and Attorney General Chris Carr over claims Georgia's campus carry bill violates the state's constitution.

P.J. D'Annunzio |

A federal appeals court has revived part of a discrimination lawsuit filed by a black woman who claimed she was denied a transfer to a tech job because...

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Court Turns Away Teacher's Facebook Comments Case Amid 'Grave Concerns' About Free Speech Rights | Daily Report

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"This is a case about just how far the First Amendment bends in allowing government to punish its employees for the viewpoints they communicate in their private lives" Justice Nels Peterson wrote. "I am doubtful that it allowed the punishment imposed here."

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"...the Second Amendment itself did not exist to give unfettered rights to gun owners at the expense of communal interests to be safe from guns via sensible regulation..."

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Nearly two weeks after the horrific shooting spree that ended with the deaths of 17 people in a Florida school, the national conversation about guns has stutter-stepped its way into intriguing new places. On the one hand, teen activists have redefined the terms of the gun control debate, sustaining media attention, organizing protests, and taking on the NRA in direct and powerful ways. These students wrong-footed the gun lobby a dozen times just last week, helping to drive gun advocates further down the darkest tunnels of authoritarianism, threats, and fabrication. Donald Trump, bungling his way into the conversation, has pushed the distracting and dangerous proposal to arm teachers in the classroom.

Let's put to one side all of the unequivocal and damning evidence suggesting that this is a dreadful idea from a practical and policy standpoint. It's worth standing back and thinking about what this would mean as a matter of personal liberty. Arming teachers in public schools (places children are required by law to appear each day) puts into the starkest possible relief the central flaw in our recent gun jurisprudence: privileging the freedom of gun owners over the freedom of everyone else to be safe from guns. The majorities in the U.S. Supreme Court's more recent Second Amendment cases almost completely ignored this countervailing liberty interest. Yet the idea of putting guns in schools highlights the problem.

The idea of putting guns in schools highlights theproblem.

When the court decided in 2008, for the first time in American history, that the Second Amendment created an individual right to own handguns in the home for self-protection, it left open as many practical questions as it resolved. Indeed, in the 10 intervening years the court has done little to clarify what Justice Antonin Scalia was doing in that case. In his dissent in District of Columbia v. Heller, Justice John Paul Stevens noted that the Second Amendment itself did not exist to give unfettered rights to gun owners at the expense of communal interests to be safe from guns via sensible regulation. Rather its purpose was to balance these rights, allowing for such regulations "so long as they do not interfere with the preservation of a well-regulated militia."

Two years later, when the high court decidedto extend the Second Amendment right discovered in Heller to states in McDonald v. Chicago, Justice Stevens expanded on this point. The problem, he explained, is that "firearms have a fundamentally ambivalent relationship to liberty" especially once they leave the home.

When considering the right to possess a gun in the home for self-defense, Justice Stevens said the argument of gun owners "has real force" while the interest of the state to regulate the guns "is somewhat weaker." The decision to keep a loaded firearm in the home to defend one's family or property, he wrote, is comparable "to decisions about the education and upbringing of one's children." It is ultimately up to the head of the household, Justice Stevens noted, to make the calculation of whether "the desired safety benefits outweigh the risks."

This argument, however, loses significant quantities of punch once the gun owner steps outdoors and joins the rest of society in public spaces. At this point we must at least acknowledge that, as Justice Stevens put it, "liberty is on both sides of the equation," because guns "have a unique potential to facilitate death and destruction and thereby to destabilize ordered liberty." As Stevens then explained:

Your interest in keeping and bearing a certain firearm may diminish my interest in being and feeling safe from armed violence. And while granting you the right to own a handgun might make you safer on any given day-assuming the handgun's marginal contribution to self-defense outweighs its marginal contribution to the risk of accident, suicide, and criminal mischief-it may make you and the community you live in less safe overall, owing to the increased number of handguns in circulation.

In other words, just because an individual might have a right to make a personal decision about how to protect his family at home does not mean he gets to override the rights of others who have reached a different conclusion.

This brings us to the problems of placing guns in schools and, in particular, guns in the hands of our kids' teachers. In the United States, of course, virtually all states have compulsory education laws that require almost all parents to send their children to school. Failure to comply with those laws, moreover, is punishable by fines or even prison. So, for parents with neither the money for private school nor the time for homeschooling, this means their kids are going to public schools.

In the days since the president floated his ideas about arming public school teachers we have learned that, in fact, in jurisdictions around the country, teachers are already armed. We have also learned that parents don't always know which teachers are carrying weapons, and that-at least in Ohio and Utah- parents are not even allowed to inquire which teachers are carrying.

Which means that parents whose children-as a result of race and income and gender-are already susceptible to vastly higher rates of violence and discipline at school, are not able to make any kind of informed decision about the potential dangers in their child's classroom, and are also not at liberty to withdraw their child from school. They have precisely no freedom to know whether their child's teacher is armed, and they have become captives to a system in which they have no control as parents over the costs and benefits of having a gun near their children. That was exactly the cost/benefit Stevens conceded should be afforded to homeowners in McDonald. Stevens' fundamental point, though, about the need to recognize the competing liberty interests of those who do not want to be captives to guns becomes all the more dramatic and prescient in a world where teachers are armed.

Whenever we talk about the issue of guns, far too much emphasis is put on the liberty interests and individual rights of the gun owners. But there's another side to the liberty coin that gets far too little attention, and that is the freedom of those who wish to live in a society-and send their children to schools-to make their own considered decisions about personal safety and risk. Because, as Stevens was careful to caution in McDonald, guns do indeed cause permanent and irreversible harm. In addition to the teachers who are telling the president that they don't want to pack heat in the science lab, the rights of parents who don't want to send their kids into a war zone should have far greater force in this debate.

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Trump's Plan to Arm Teachers Shows How the Supreme Court Got the Second Amendment So Wrong

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Nearly two weeks after the horrific shooting spree that ended with the deaths of 17 people in a Florida school, the national conversation about guns has stutter-stepped its way into intriguing new places. On the one hand, teen activists have redefined the terms of the gun control debate, sustaining media attention, organizing protests, and taking on the NRA in direct and powerful ways.

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"pictures of naked men with “inappropriate comments” underneath them. She was also concerned about the nature of the personal conversations that the teacher was having with the students"

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It's not just students who can get into difficulty for school-related blogging.

In a recent case, a federal court rejected a challenge brought by a non-tenured teacher when the public school at which he taught decided not to renew his contract. The school had accused the teacher of overly familiar contacts with students via his MySpace page that were deemed "disruptive to school activities."

Spanierman v. Hughes

In Spanierman v. Hughes, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 69569 (D. Conn. Sept. 16, 2008), Jeffrey Spanierman, a teacher at Emmett O'Brien High School in Ansonia, Connecticut, created a MySpace page, ostensibly "to communicate with students about homework, to learn more about the students so he could relate to them better, and to conduct casual, non-school related discussions."

One of Spanierman's school colleagues became concerned about the page, which she said contained, among other things, pictures of naked men with "inappropriate comments" underneath them. She was also concerned about the nature of the personal conversations that the teacher was having with the students, and she convinced Spanierman to remove the page, which she considered "disruptive to students." Spanierman subsequently created a new MySpace page, however, that included similar content and similar personal communications with students. When the colleague learned of the new page, she reported it to the school administration, which placed Spanierman on administrative leave and ultimately declined to renew his teaching contract for the following year. After hearings that he attended with his union representative and later with his attorneys, he received a letter stating that he had "exercised poor judgment as a teacher."

Legal Issues

The discipline of a teacher for conduct outside the classroom raises a number of legal issues, depending upon the circumstances: Is the school public or private? Did the teacher have a contract with the school that gives the teacher rights with respect to job termination? Are there state statutes that impose standards on the teacher, or obligations on the school with respect to teacher discipline? Did the conduct involve expression that may be protected by the First Amendment? Did the conduct have a connection to the school environment?

Spanierman was employed by a public school, consequently, the school's ability to take disciplinary action was limited by both the federal and state constitutions, in particular the First Amendment and the "due process" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Spanierman claimed that both his "procedural" and his "substantive" due process rights were violated.

As a non-tenured teacher, Spanierman was more vulnerable to the school's evaluation of his conduct than a tenured teacher might have been.

The nature of the "procedure" to which an individual is entitled under the due process clause depends upon the nature of the right the individual is claiming. The minimum procedure to which an individual is usually entitled is notice and an opportunity to be heard. Spanierman based his procedural due process claim on the Connecticut Teacher Tenure Act, which he claimed gave him certain procedural rights, i.e., a period of notice and a hearing, and termination only for just cause. The court found that Spanierman had received notice and a hearing, but that neither the Connecticut Statute nor the teacher's union-negotiated agreement required a showing of just cause for a decision not to renew a non-tenured teacher's contract.

A claim of substantive due process focuses on the nature of the action taken by government rather than the procedure by which it is undertaken, i.e., whether the governmental action is arbitrary or without justification. The court also rejected Spanierman's substantive due process claim that the public school's action was arbitrary, egregious and outrageous, again relying on Spanierman's non-tenured status, and the fact that non-renewal of a non-tenured teacher's contract was the type of event specifically anticipated in the union-negotiated employment agreement.

Selective Prosecution?

Apparently, Spanierman was not the only teacher in the school with a MySpace page. Accordingly, he made a "selective prosecution" argument, pointing to two other teachers at his school who also had MySpace pages but who had not been disciplined. Spanierman argued that he had been treated differently than his colleagues in violation of the U.S. Constitution's Equal Protection clause. The court dismissed that claim on purely legal and on factual grounds, i.e., that Spanierman failed to show that the other teachers had contact with students via their MySpace pages. Consequently, the court concluded, the situations of the other teachers were not analogous to Spanierman's (they were not "similarly situated") and therefore he had not been treated differently in comparison to them.

Spanierman's free speech claim was rejected as well. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that both students and teachers retain free speech rights in the school environment, those rights are not unrestricted. See, for example, Morse v. Frederick, 127 S. Ct. 2618 (2007), the "Bong Hits for Jesus" case, where the U.S. Supreme Court famously upheld the discipline of a student for unfurling a banner containing a pro-drug message at a school-sponsored event, on the grounds that the banner violated a school policy against the display of material advertising or promoting the use of illegal drugs.

Disruptive to School Activities

The school district judged that Spanierman's behavior on his MySpace page was "likely to disrupt school activities." It is on this point that the court drilled down to Spanierman's contacts with his students. Excerpts of a number of exchanges with students were included in the opinion. And while to some these exchanges may seem innocuous, the court concluded as follows:

In the court's view, it was not unreasonable for the Defendants to find that the Plaintiff's conduct on MySpace was disruptive to school activities. The above examples of the online exchanges the Plaintiff had with students show a potentially unprofessional rapport with students, and the court can see how a school's administration would disapprove of, and find disruptive, a teacher's discussion with a student about "getting any" (presumably sex), or a threat made to a student (albeit a facetious one) about detention.

Moreover, there is evidence of complaints about the Plaintiff's MySpace activities. For example, in her affidavit, Ford states that Emmett O'Brien students informed her of the Plaintiff's MySpace conduct, which made some of them "uncomfortable."...It is reasonable for the Defendants to expect the Plaintiff, a teacher with supervisory authority over students, to maintain a professional, respectful association with those students. This does not mean that the Plaintiff could not be friendly or humorous; however, upon review of the record, it appears that the Plaintiff would communicate with students as if he were their peer, not their teacher. Such conduct could very well disrupt the learning atmosphere of a school, which sufficiently outweighs the value of Plaintiff's MySpace speech.

Nothing New?

It's possible to view the Spanierman case as a cautionary tale on using new forms of communication in the educational environment. Spanierman said he intended to use his MySpace page to better relate to his students; indeed the case demonstrates that such a page can facilitate easy communication between teachers and students. But it is that easy familiarity that, in the view of the school district, drew Spanierman over the line between acceptable discourse and inappropriate communications. The severity of the punishment may also reflect an institutional discomfort with a new means of student-teacher communication that is outside the channels customarily controlled by the school district.

And, of course, the Spanierman case could also be viewed as a simple case of inappropriate communications with students, regardless of the medium involved. Although reasonable minds may differ on whether Spanierman's communications warranted the discipline he received, the court ruled that, under the circumstances, it was the school district's call to make.

It's Not the First, and It Won't Be the Last

This is not the first case in which a teacher, or an aspiring teacher, was discharged or disciplined for conduct involving a MySpace page. In another recent case, the so-called "drunken pirate" case, a teacher in training was denied a teaching degree just prior to her graduation when officials at her teaching school found a photo on her MySpace page showing her in a pirate hat, drinking alcohol. In Snyder v. Millersville University, filed in federal court in Pennsylvania, there was apparently no contact with students, and it is disputed whether any students at the school ever saw the photo or the MySpace page. The school district also contended that Snyder's conduct as a student teacher was unprofessional in ways unrelated to her MySpace page.

[NOTE: The following information is an UPDATE on June 24, 2009, reflecting the decision in the case.]

Following a trial, the federal court judge came to a conclusion similar to that in Spanierman. The court rejected Snyder's challenge to the denial of her teaching degree because she failed to complete the required curriculum. The court also concluded that her First Amendment claim should be evaluated under the standards applicable to teachers, not to students, and thus she would be protected by the First Amendment only if the material on her MySpace page involved matters of "public concern." Because Snyder admitted herself that the contents of her MySpace page were personal in nature, the court rejected her claim that her free speech rights were violated by discipline resulting from the contents of the MySpace page.

The Bottom Line

Both the Spanierman and Snyder cases are a subset of a larger category of disputes that involve posting in online forums, blogs and social networking sites. Regardless of the rights implicated, these cases remind us to be mindful of the ramifications that may flow from online personal expression that is readily accessible to students, co-workers, and employers.
Jeffrey D. Neuburger is a partner in the New York office of Proskauer Rose LLP, and co-chair of the Technology, Media and Communications Practice Group. His practice focuses on technology and media-related business transactions and counseling of clients in the utilization of new media. He is an adjunct professor at Fordham University School of Law teaching E-Commerce Law and the co-author of two books, "Doing Business on the Internet" and "Emerging Technologies and the Law." He also co-writes the New Media & Technology Law Blog.

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Teacher Fired for Inappropriate Behavior on MySpace Page - MediaShift

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It's not just students who can get into difficulty for school-related blogging. In a recent case, a federal court rejected a challenge brought by a non-tenured teacher when the public school at which he taught decided not to renew his contract. The school had accused the teacher of overly familiar contacts with students via his ...

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Suspended for stepping on the flag

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History Teacher Could Be Fired After Stepping On American Flag During Free Speech Lesson

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Teacher Guidelines Regarding Social Media-"Facebook Fired"

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Teacher Guidelines Regarding Social Media-"Facebook Fired"

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Dos and Don'ts

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If you had walked in my classroom 10 years ago, you would have seen me in front of the class, wearing a pencil skirt, high heels, and my hair in a tight bun. My students were probably sitting in straight rows while I was lecturing.

But walk into my classroom now, and you'll see something entirely different. Tables in groups, students on the floor with Chromebooks in their laps. The students are talking, collaborating, moving around. And I'm right there with them, sitting criss-cross (applesauce) ... in jeans.

I donated the pencil skirt long ago, and I opt for jeans nearly every single day. Now I know there's a lot of controversy about whether teachers should even be allowed to wear jeans on a regular basis. But like @CajunMSTeacher, who recently had a tweet on the subject go viral, I think jeans should absolutely be a part of the teacher dress code, and here's why.

1. Jeans say I'm dressed to work, not just for work.

It's hard to sit down on the carpet and read a book with your kids while you're wearing a skirt. You constantly have to check to make sure everything is covered. I can't lean over a desk to help a student in a classroom full of teenagers if I'm concerned about where my skirt ends up when I'm bent over.

I also don't want to worry about creasing my dry-clean-only dress pants. (And who has time or money for dry cleaning?) Jeans solve these problems. No fear of embarrassing pictures on Snapchat or a spam Instagram account or expensive dry cleaning bills. Plus, I can work in jeans: I can move, sit, stand, or kneel without worry.

2. Jeans allow you to blend in while walking in the hallways.

I look pretty young (according to my students). I also carry a backpack because it's way better on my back and I am out of my classroom for over half of the day. So when I'm trudging through the halls in my jeans and backpack, the kids don't even notice I'm there. Imagine all of the inside information I learn during these adventures!

The best is when a kid in front of me cusses and I say "language!" They turn to retaliate, realize I'm a teacher, and say, "Sorry, ma'am." Or when a kid waves to me, and their friend asks who I am, and the kid replies, "My English teacher." Constant entertainment.

3. Wearing jeans helps build relationships.

What is the key to being an excellent teacher? Great relationships with your students. Dress clothes say I am your boss, but jeans say I'm with you. In my classroom, I am a facilitator, a coach, and a mentor. Jeans allow me to fill those roles more easily (and comfortably).

4. Jeans can look just as professional as other looks.

Most of the arguments against wearing jeans claim that if teachers want to be treated like professionals, they should look like professionals, but I'd argue that there is no longer a blanket look for professionals. Plus, there are unprofessional looks that pop up, whether you allow jeans or not.

5. Teachers who wear jeans are just happier.

"Happy wife, happy life" is a saying we often hear when someone gets married. Well, the same goes for the classroom. "Happy teacher, happy class" seems like a good saying. After all, the teacher's mood usually sets the tone for the day.

When you're comfortable, you're happy. When you're happy, you're a better teacher. And when you're a better teacher, your students learn more. Who isn't happy when they're wearing their favorite pair of comfy jeans?

6. Jeans allow teachers to be more mobile and hands on.

Teachers today don't just stand up in front and lecture anymore. Being comfortable means being able to move, bend down to help students, and sit on the floor to help a kid organize their backpack full of papers. Jeans help teachers do their jobs at the highest possible level.

7. Jeans allow us to be treated like adults.

I work in a school where the teacher dress code is not strictly enforced. Teachers wear jeans pretty regularly, but we don't look like a slovenly group of people, nor are our students suffering because of our casual attire. Our admin trusts us when it comes to choosing attire, and we definitely appreciate it.

We, as teachers, want to be treated like adults, without a bunch of extra rules. Giving us the freedom to wear what we choose is a small but important step in this direction. It's the same type of lesson we teach our students, so let's enforce it in the teacher dress code, too.
What's your take? Should jeans be a part of the teacher dress code? Why or why not? Come and share in our WeAreTeachers Chat group on Facebook. Plus, 25 Teacher Wardrobe Staples You Can Buy on Amazon for $25 or less.

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Seriously, Though, Teachers Should Be Allowed to Wear Jeans

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If you had walked in my classroom 10 years ago, you would have seen me in front of the class, wearing a pencil skirt, high heels, and my hair in a tight bun. My students were probably sitting in straight rows while I was lecturing.