In the Age of Garcetti: Public Teachers' Free Speech Rights Within the Transgender-Student Debates

Abstract

A culture war over gender identity is playing out on the school playground, as conservative lawmakers across the country have introduced and implemented various pieces of anti-trans legislation focused on stripping away the privacy and expression of transgender students’ identities. An important question within this legislation remains: may public school teachers be exempt from following these policies? This Comment examines teachers’ free speech rights within two contexts: mandated parental notification of transgender-student policies and guidelines requiring teachers to adhere to students’ preferred pronouns. It considers the viability of compelled-speech claims brought by teachers, applying First Amendment jurisprudence and Garcetti v. Ceballos’s government-speech framework. Ultimately, this Comment argues that Garcetti bars teachers’ compelled speech claims, binding them to parental notification policies and using students’ preferred gender pronouns and names because such speech is made “pursuant to their job duties” and thus constitutes unprotected government speech.