果冻传媒app官方

Case Overview

FIRE Victory closed

In 2021, James Brown, a professor of urology at the University of Iowa, sued Marc Linder, a law professor at the University who specializes in labor law. The lawsuit arose out of Linder鈥檚 opposition to Brown serving as an expert witness in a labor dispute over the Swift Pork Company鈥檚 employee bathroom break policies. Linder, believing Brown鈥檚 testimony would be detrimental to workers, complained to the head of Brown鈥檚 department, criticized Brown in an interview with the (arguing that Brown鈥檚 testimony 鈥渃ould have unleashed . . . terrible consequences for workers of Iowa鈥), and said in an opinion piece for the that Brown was among the 鈥渉ired guns鈥 serving 鈥減rivate profit-making defendants.鈥 During Brown鈥檚 deposition, Linder stood outside wearing a shirt reading 鈥淧eople Over Profits.鈥

Brown sued Linder, arguing that because Linder was a professor at a public university, his criticism of Brown was state action amounting to retaliation for Brown鈥檚 exercise of First Amendment rights. A federal district court rejected that argument and Brown appealed.

On July 19, 2022, FIREfiled an amicus brief in support of Linder in the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. FIREargued that Linder, although an employee of a public institution, was not acting under color of law and that courts should be reluctant to attribute the speech of faculty to the institutions that employ them. Even if Linder were acting under color of law, his criticism of Brown would not amount to retaliation: Faculty members in particular must recognize that criticism and public disagreement come with the job. 果冻传媒app官方鈥檚 brief was principally authored by Eugene Volokh and Michael Quinan, a UCLA law student, as part of the First Amendment Amicus Clinic at the UCLA School of Law.

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