What was true when Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote that line some 33 years ago in Arnett v. Kennedy (1974) is certainly true today in our politicized times.
Yet federal employees currently lack meaningful workplace protections for their First Amendment right to comment freely upon matters of public concern. In reviewing nearly 100 cases since 1983 in which federal employees brought an appellate-level claim alleging workplace retaliation for protected speech, I discovered that not a single federal employee has ever won such a suit on the merits.
