{"id":1861,"date":"2006-05-31T09:07:50","date_gmt":"2006-05-31T15:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/protecting-government-from-pesky-whistle-blowers\/"},"modified":"2006-05-31T09:07:50","modified_gmt":"2006-05-31T15:07:50","slug":"protecting-government-from-pesky-whistle-blowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/protecting-government-from-pesky-whistle-blowers\/","title":{"rendered":"Protecting Government from Pesky Whistle-Blowers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.chron.com\/disp\/story.mpl\/nation\/3916234.html\">Supreme Court curbs protections for whistle-blowers<\/a> By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press<\/p>\n<p>The Supreme Court scaled back protections for government workers who blow the whistle on official misconduct Tuesday, a 5-4 decision in which new Justice Samuel Alito cast the deciding vote.<\/p>\n<p>In a victory for the Bush administration, justices said the <strong class=\"highlight\">20 million public employees do not have free-speech protections for what they say as part of their jobs<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Critics predicted the impact would be sweeping, from <strong>silencing<\/strong> police officers who fear retribution for reporting department corruption, to <strong>subduing<\/strong> federal employees who want to reveal problems with government hurricane preparedness or terrorist-related security.<\/p>\n<p>Supporters said that it will protect governments from lawsuits filed by disgruntled workers <em>pretending<\/em> to be legitimate whistle-blowers. <span class=\"mine\">[mjh: a rampant problem, as we all know.]<\/span> &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Official communications have official consequences, creating a need for substantive consistency and clarity. Supervisors must ensure that their employees&#8217; official communications are accurate, demonstrate sound judgment, and <em>promote the employer&#8217;s mission<\/em>,&#8221; Kennedy wrote.<\/p>\n<p>Justice David Souter&#8217;s lengthy dissent sounded like it might have been the majority opinion if O&#8217;Connor were still on the court. &#8220;Private and public interests in addressing official wrongdoing and threats to health and safety can outweigh the government&#8217;s stake in the efficient implementation of policy,&#8221; he wrote. Souter was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Supreme Court curbs protections for whistle-blowers By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press The Supreme Court scaled back protections for government workers who blow the whistle on official misconduct Tuesday, a 5-4 decision in which new Justice Samuel Alito cast the deciding vote. In a victory for the Bush administration, justices said the 20 million public employees &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/protecting-government-from-pesky-whistle-blowers\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Protecting Government from Pesky Whistle-Blowers<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dump-duhbya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}