Lisa Guffey v. Roslynn Mauskopf, No. 20-5183 (D.C. Cir. 2022)
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Appellees work at the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. When they are away from work, they want to express support for their preferred candidates in partisan elections. AO employees could do that for the first 79 years of the agency’s history. But since 2018, the AO has forbidden it. That prohibition violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.
The DC Circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to Appellees but limited its injunction against the first seven restrictions to apply only to Appellees. The court reversed its grant of summary judgment to the AO on the other two restrictions, and the court remanded for it to enjoin their application to Appellees as well. The court explained that absent the belief that precedent directs it, there is no reason to treat driving voters to the polls and organizing political events differently from the other seven prohibited modes of political expression. They all implicate core First Amendment rights. And the AO has failed to show that they present any non-speculative threat to its operations.
Further, the court wrote, that the AO is a government entity with an independent duty to uphold the Constitution. The court explained that it trusted that upon receipt of our judgment, it will reconsider the contested restrictions for employees whose work is comparable to (or less sensitive than) the work Appellees do.
The court issued a subsequent related opinion or order on January 13, 2023.
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