Week+3+Legal+Summary

Discuss the legal issues involved in the case assigned to your team. Together, reach consensus and develop a response to your case study to share with the rest of the class. Your team response should include:

Your team’s response to the questions that accompany the case study, with supporting evidence from the readings. Questions you still have about the case study. Additional comments, as appropriate, including challenges your team faced responding to the case study.

By midnight, Saturday, the Reporter should post the response as a new, clearly labeled thread in the in the Week 3: Team Judicial Review Presentations discussion forum. If you used a non-ELC tool such as Google Doc, please be sure to provide a public link. By the end of the week, review the summaries posted by the other teams. Post a response to each team's summary, by providing feedback to teams, asking questions, or responding to questions posed by the instructor.The Teacher who Honked for Peace - Team B Case Study

Ms. Paca was a probationary elementary school teacher. During a “current events” session in her class, a student asked whether she participated in political demonstrations. Ms. Paca told her students that when she passed a demonstration against the war in Iraq and saw a placard that said “Honk for Peace,” she honked her horn to show support. When the students told their parents about the discussion, some complained to the Principal. Ms. Paca's contract was not renewed and she claims it was because of this incident. She says she was exercising her free speech rights and asserted principles of "academic freedom." The school said that since the discussion took place during class hours and as a part of her official duties, she had no right to express her personal opinions. (This is a real case, decided by the Court of Appeals in 2007).

//This case is based on Deborah A. Mayer, Plaintiff-appellant, v. Monroe County Community School Corporation, et al., Defendants-appellees ([])

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit. - 474 F.3d 477

Argued December 1, 2006 Decided January 24, 2007//

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 * Does Ms. Paca have a case against the school for wrongful termination?**
 * She does not have a case b/c she is in a position where she can't express her opinions on educational kinds of things.
 * "As far as the courts are concerned, "public education is inherently a situation where the government is the speaker, and ... its employees are the mouthpieces of the government," said Vikram Amar, a professor at UC's Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. Whatever academic freedom exists for college teachers is "much, much less" in public schools, he said." ([])
 * In addition, she was in a probationary position to begin with.
 * "When the student asked the question about taking part in demonstrations, Mayer said, she replied that there were peace marches in Bloomington, that she blew her horn whenever she saw a "Honk for Peace" sign, and that people should seek peaceful solutions before going to war." ([]) - Instead, the teacher should have taken herself out of the equation and spoke objectively offering multiple resources and perspectives on political demonstrations.


 * Does the school system have the right to discipline Ms. Paca for expressing her opinions?**
 * "Mayer, the court said, was told by her bosses that she could teach about the war "as long as she kept her opinions to herself." Like the Los Angeles district attorney's employee whose demotion led to the Supreme Court's 2006 ruling, the appellate panel said, Mayer had no constitutional right to say anything on the job that conflicted with her employer's policy." ([])


 * QUESTIONS/AMBIGUITIES**
 * This "policy" was given verbally according to the above, but was there any policy in writing to which the teach could refer at a later date so that she would be able to ensure that she was indeed following school policy?


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