Parties: Minn. State Bd. for Cmty. Colleges v. Knight
Date: 1984-02-21
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Paragraph: 51 - This First Amendment freedom to explore novel or controversial ideas in the classroom is closely linked to the freedom of faculty members to express their views to the administration concerning matters of academic governance.
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Paragraph: 51 - This First Amendment freedom to explore novel or controversial ideas in the classroom is closely linked to the freedom of faculty members to express their views to the administration concerning matters of academic governance. If the First Amendment is truly to protect the "free play of the spirit" within our institutions of higher learning, Shelton v. Tucker, supra, at 487, 81 S.Ct., at 251, then the faculty at those institutions must be able to participate effectively in the discussion of such matters as, for example, curriculum reform, degree requirements, student affairs, new facilities, and budgetary planning. The freedom to teach without inhibition may be jeopardized just as gravely by a restriction on the faculty's ability to speak out on such matters as by the more direct restrictions struck down in Keyishian and in Epperson.
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Paragraph: 72 - There can be no question but that the First Amendment secures the right of individuals to communicate with their government. And the First Amendment was intended to secure something more than an exercise in futility—it guarantees a meaningful opportunity to express one's views. For example, this Court has recognized that the right to forward views might become a practical nullity if Government prohibited persons from banding together to make their voices heard. Thus, the First Amendment protects freedom of association because it makes the right to express one's views meaningful.
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Paragraph: 79 - Moreover, the District Court found that prior to the passage of the challenged statute, appellees were able to participate in the "meet and confer" process. Their former ability to communicate with the administration has been impaired not by the administration's unwillingness to listen, but by the challenged statute. Any realistic appraisal of the effects of such a restriction must lead to the conclusion that this statute has restricted the traditional freedom of speech appellees had once enjoyed. "[T]he capacity of a group or individual 'to participate in the intellectual give and take of campus debate . . . [would be] limited by denial of access to the customary media for communicating with the administration, faculty members and [ ] students.' "
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Paragraph: 72 - There can be no question but that the First Amendment secures the right of individuals to communicate with their government. And the First Amendment was intended to secure something more than an exercise in futility—it guarantees a meaningful opportunity to express one's views.
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Paragraph: 72 - There can be no question but that the First Amendment secures the right of individuals to communicate with their government. And the First Amendment was intended to secure something more than an exercise in futility—it guarantees a meaningful opportunity to express one's views. For example, this Court has recognized that the right to forward views might become a practical nullity if Government prohibited persons from banding together to make their voices heard. Thus, the First Amendment protects freedom of association because it makes the right to express one's views meaningful.
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Paragraph: 17 - Indeed, the claim in this case is not even a claim of access to a nonpublic forum, such as the school mail system at issue in Perry Education Assn. A private organization there claimed a right of access to government property for use in speaking to potentially willing listeners among a group of private individuals and public officials not acting in an official capacity. The organization claimed no right to have anyone, public or private, attend to its message. See also United States Postal Service v. Greenburgh Civic Associations, 453 U.S. 114, 101 S.Ct. 2676, 69 L.Ed.2d 517 (1981) (postal letter box); Greer v. Spock, 424 U.S. 828, 96 S.Ct. 1211, 47 L.Ed.2d 505 (1976) (military base); Lehman v. City of Shaker Heights, 418 U.S. 298, 94 S.Ct. 2714, 41 L.Ed.2d 770 (1974) (advertising space on municipal bus); Adderley v. Florida, 385 U.S. 39, 87 S.Ct. 242, 17 L.Ed.2d 149 (1966) (county jail). Appellees here make a claim quite different from those made in the nonpublic forum cases. They do not contend that certain government property has been closed to them for use in communicating with private individuals or public officials not acting as such who might be willing to listen to them. Rather, they claim an entitlement to a government audience for their views.
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Paragraph: 20 - Appellees have no constitutional right to force the government to listen to their views. They have no such right as members of the public, as government employees, or as instructors in an institution of higher education.
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Paragraph: 21 - The Constitution does not grant to members of the public generally a right to be heard by public bodies making decisions of policy.
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Paragraph: 24 - Public officials at all levels of government daily make policy decisions based only on the advice they decide they need and choose to hear. To recognize a constitutional right to participate directly in government policymaking would work a revolution in existing government practices.
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Paragraph: 27 - Appellees' status as public employees, however, gives them no special constitutional right to a voice in the making of policy by their government employer.
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Paragraph: 34 - Although there is no constitutional right to participate in academic governance, the First Amendment guarantees the right both to speak and to associate. Appellees' speech and associational rights, however, have not been infringed by Minnesota's restriction of participation in "meet and confer" sessions to the faculty's exclusive representative.
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Paragraph: 35 - N162* It is doubtless true that the unique status of the exclusive representative in the "meet and confer" process amplifies its voice in the policymaking process. But that amplification no more impairs individual instructors' constitutional freedom to speak than the amplification of individual voices impaired the union's freedom to speak in Smith v. Arkansas State Highway Employees, Local 1315, supra. Moreover, the exclusive representative's unique role in "meet and negotiate" sessions amplifies its voice as much as its unique role in "meet and confer" sessions, yet the Court summarily affirmed the District Court's approval of that role in this case. Amplification of the sort claimed is inherent in government's freedom to choose its advisers. A person's right to speak is not infringed when government simply ignores that person while listening to others.
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Paragraph: 50 - N163* It is crucial at the outset to recognize that two related First Amendment interests are at stake here. On the one hand, those faculty members who are barred from participation in "meet and confer" sessions by virtue of their refusal to join MCCFA have a First Amendment right to express their views on important matters of academic governance to college administrators. At the same time, they enjoy a First Amendment right to be free from compelled associations with positions or views that they do not espouse. In my view, the real vice of the Minnesota Public Employment Labor Relations Act (PELRA) is that it impermissibly forces non-union faculty members to choose between these two rights.
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Paragraph: 54 - Especially in the academic setting where respect for these associational rights is considered fundamental to the protection of freedom of thought, such associational conformity is far too high a price to exact for the right to express one's views on questions of academic policy.
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Paragraph: 55 - Of course, if the "meet and confer" process did not play such a central and important role in formulating academic policy in Minnesota's community colleges or if other avenues of communication provided non-union faculty a nearly equivalent mechanism for expressing their views, the First Amendment would not be violated, since in those circumstances non-union faculty members would not be faced with a Hobson's choice between exercising their right to participate in academic policy discussions and preserving their associational rights.
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Paragraph: 80 - N164* In short, by prohibiting the administration from listening to appellees, the PELRA ensures that appellees' speech can have no meaningful impact upon the administration. Appellees do not rely on the government's "obligation" to hear them; they rely only on their right to have a meaningful opportunity to speak. If a public employer does not wish to listen to appellants, that is its privilege, but the First Amendment at least requires that that decision be made in an open marketplace of ideas, rather than under a statutory scheme that does not permit appellees' speech to be considered, no matter how much merit it may contain.
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Paragraph: 87 - This statute gives the union the same "monopoly in expressing its views to the government" that we condemned in the Madison School District case. The Minnesota "meet and confer" sessions create, in reality, an exclusive method for communication with government, and permit only one point of view to be expressed. The resultant insulation of public policy from exposure to the full range of views is that to which the constitutional ban on viewpoint discrimination is addressed. The views of all have the right to be considered on their merits, rather than to be excluded by statutory prohibition. It is one thing to say, as the majority does, that the government may decline to listen to those whose views it finds unhelpful; it is quite another to say that those views need not be given even a fair chance to compete for the attention of government.
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Paragraph: 69 - Thus the PELRA has substituted a union-controlled process for the formerly free exchange of views that took place between faculty and the administration. In practice, the union has a monopoly on the effective opportunity to present views to the administration on the wide range of subjects covered by the "meet and confer" process.
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Paragraph: 36 - Nor is appellees' right to speak infringed by the ability of MCCFA to "retaliate" for protected speech, as the District Court put it, by refusing to appoint them to the "meet and confer" committees. The state of Minnesota seeks to obtain MCCFA's views on policy questions, and MCCFA has simply chosen representatives who share its views on the issues to be discussed with the state. MCCFA's ability to "retaliate" by not selecting those who dissent from its views no more unconstitutionally inhibits appellees' speech than voters' power to reject a candidate for office inhibits the candidate's speech.
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