Two public library workers in New Orleans are headed to federal court to challenge a policy that they say infringes on their first-amendment rights.
That policy, enacted in June 2020 by Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration, aims to punish any city employee's criticism of their workplace or their bosses, even if expressed during off-duty hours in their private time.
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The employees at the center of the suit, Andrew Okun and Erin Wilson say their protests fell on deaf ears when the policy was instituted, and that they were required to consent in order to keep their employment.
Specifically, Cantrell’s chief administrative officer Gilbert Montano revised Policy No. 83(R) on June 17 of last year. The policy now bans employees from “engaging or responding to negative or disparaging posts about city departments, employees or policies” while using private messaging channels like Slack or Discord or while playing online video games at home.
The policy also prohibits “defamatory, libelous, vulgar, violent, obscene, abusive, profane, threatening, racially and ethnically hateful, or otherwise offensive or illegal information or material.”
David Hammer has been covering the story for WWL-TV and NOLA.com and spoke with WWL Radio Monday.
Hammer quoted the librarians’ lawyer, former ACLU of Louisiana legal director and current Tulane Law Clinic professor Katie Schwartzmann, saying this case from a first-amendment standpoint “is really egregious because it is a government agency telling people what they can and can’t say in their private time.”
Wilson in particular, as someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns, is outspoken on social media about transgender issues and is concerned what the local government might decide is “offensive.”
Wilson also served as an anonymous informant for WWL-TV in March of 2020, before the policy was enacted, to shine a spotlight on public library policies that left no leeway for workers who were concerned about their health in the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak.
Wilson has since allowed their identity to be disclosed by WWL, and they said this policy could have led to their dismissal had it been in place at the time.
Hammer says that's what sets it apart from a private company keeping people from bad-mouthing the business where they work.
“The difference here is that as a government agency regulating people’s private speech,” Hammer said, “that is where the precedent is set.”
According to Hammer, the city says the policy was put in place to limit discriminatory comments from city employees in public forums that could be construed as representing the city even if was simply an employee's personal opinion, but with the additional language, it may now be considered too broad.
