Official Duty Speech

Under Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410 (2006), the speech of a government employee, even if it is public concern speech, is not protected if the speech was pursuant to the employee’s official duties rather than in the employee’s private capacity. While the extent to which this ruling applies to K-12 teachers speaking in a classroom was not addressed in Garcetti, most lower courts have begun to rely extensively on Garcetti in teacher speech cases involving classroom speech by K-12 teachers. These cases consider the teacher's classroom speech to be official duty speech particularly if the speech relates to the subject matter the teacher is assigned to teach. Teacher speech outside the classroom can be official duty speech if it is engaged in as part of the teacher's workplace responsibilities.