Johnson v. Poway Unified School District

We consider whether a public school district infringes the First Amendment liberties of one of its teachers when it orders him not to use his public position as a pulpit from which to preach his own views on the role of God in our Nation’s history to the captive students in his mathematics classroom. The answer is clear: it does not.

When Bradley Johnson, a high school calculus teacher, goes to work and performs the duties he is paid to perform, he speaks not as an individual, but as a public employee, and the school district is free to “take legitimate and appropriate steps to ensure that its message is neither garbled nor distorted.” Rosenberger v. Rector & Visitors of the Univ. of Va., 515 U.S. 819, 833 , 115 S.Ct. 2510 , 132 L.Ed.2d 700 (1995). Just as the Constitution would not protect Johnson were he to decide that he no longer wished to teach math at all, preferring to discuss Shakespeare rather than Newton, it does not permit him to speak as freely at work in his role as a teacher about his views on God, our Nation’s history, or God’s role in our Nation’s history as he might on a sidewalk, in a park, at his dinner table, or in countless other locations.

Because…