Remember the case Good News Employee Association v Hicks? That's the case from Oakland earlier this year that dealt with the question of whether a government office could prevent an employee group from posting a flyer for an anti-gay employee organization on an office bulletin board. The 9th circuit ruled that the the office manager had the authority to disallow the posting of the flyer. As I said at the time, I think that decision was wrong. But the Worldnutdaily and STACLU and others like them are completely distorting the ruling in the case.

JonJayRay has a post at STACLU titled Marriage as Hate-Speech Case now Filed with US Supreme Court. The plaintiffs have filed a petition for cert with the Supreme Court (and as I said months ago, I think they should take it and I think they should overturn the ruling). But the case has nothing to do with "marriage as hate speech." JonJayRay has been singing this absurd song since March, when the ruling came down.

He was quoting the Worldnutdaily, who is trying to spin the ruling as outlawing certain words and phrases because they're "hate speech":

A ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has concluded that municipal employers have the right to censor the words "natural family," "marriage" and "family values" because that is hate speech and could scare workers.

In his latest post he quotes the same rhetoric from the Pro-Family Law Center in announcing their cert petition:

"The Pro-Family Law Center has challenged Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and United States District Court rulings finding the terms "marriage," "natural family," and "family values" to be hate-speech. The case involves the threat of termination of employment by the City of Oakland against two of its employees who used such words on an employee bulletin board. ....

In United States District Court, Case No. CV-03-03542-VRW, the California federal courts concluded that the terms "marriage," "natural family," and "family values" could be censored in a municipal workplace as hate-speech and in the interest of "administrative efficiency." (See here). Specifically, the City of Oakland banned the use of these terms on postings made to an open bulletin board provided to employees during the same-sex marriage debate in California during 2002 through 2003.

But all of this is nonsense. The case had nothing to do with outlawing particular phrases, nor did it have anything to do with "hate speech." In fact, that phrase appears nowhere in the ruling, and for a very good reason: California does not have a law criminalizing hate speech, nor does any other state. The issue in the case was the application of Pickering, which requires judges to apply a balancing test between free speech rights and the administrative needs of the employer. And bear in mind that district and appellate judges are bound to follow precedent, so they had no choice but to apply that test as best they could.

Again, I think they applied the test wrong. I think they should have allowed the flyer to be posted. And I think the Supreme Court should take the case and replace the balancing test in Pickering with more of a bright line standard, perhaps along the lines of the rule Tinker applies in student speech cases, that puts the presumption in favor of free speech. Better yet, I would like to see the application of a limited public forum test that says that if they're going to allow one group to use the bulletin boards, they have to allow all groups to use it, regardless of content.

But none of this has anything to do with declaring phrases like "marriage", "natural family", or "family values" to be "hate speech." They are completely distorting the ruling, which was very narrow and involved a very specific set of circumstances, as outlawing any speech about the subject. It's a lie, plain and simple. And it's a lie that they keep telling over and over again, told for the purpose of creating the perception that Christians are on the verge of being thrown in jail for advocating their beliefs. It's all part of their very persistent PR campaign to strike the persecution pose.