STANFORD — Lawyers for two Oakland city workers told an appeals-court panel Thursday their clients' free-speech rights were violated when supervisors removed a anti-homosexuality flier the duo had posted on a workplace bulletin board.
In fact, attorney Scott Lively said, the city opened the door to such debate by letting its e-mail system be used to disseminate information on a National Coming Out Day rally. "My clients met the challenge of promotion of gay marriage in the workplace," he said, and can't be denied the ability to express their views.
But city officials, as employers, have broad rights to restrict speech that might disrupt the workplace, attorney Angela Padilla countered. She said an e-mail announcement of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event wouldn't mean the city must allow postings by white supremacists or anyone who believes African Americans impugn the workplace's integrity. The plaintiffs in the case, incidentally, are African-Americans.
The three-judge panel, sitting in special session at the Stanford Law School, will render a decision within a few months.
The case involves a flier Regina Rederford and Robin Christy, 20, posted in their office at Oakland's Community and Economic Development Agency in 2003. Promoting their Good News Employee Association, the flier urged people to "preserve our workplace with integrity" and said their association "is a forum for people of faith to express their views on contemporary issues of the day with respect for the natural family, marriage and family values."
Another CEDA worker who is a lesbian complained to supervisors that the flier made her feel targeted and excluded; supervisors reviewed the flier and removed it, encouraging Rederford and Christy to revise and repost it without the language now at issue.
Rederford and Christy sued, claiming their rights were violated by an Oakland anti-discrimination policy that promotes homosexuality and denounces Christian values. A federal judge dismissed the city as a defendant in March 2004, and in February 2005 granted summary judgment in favor of then-City Manager Robert Bobb and CEDA Deputy Executive Director Joyce Hicks.
Senior Circuit Judge Betty Fletcher on Thursday asked Lively whether his clients realize they have "a rather low level of protection" on potentially incendiary or discriminatory language in the workplace, and should "keep away from words that'll rile people up."
"But shouldn't that go both ways?" Lively replied, noting his clients hadn't complained about the National Coming Out Day e-mail that ran contrary to their beliefs.
Circuit Judge Sandra Ikuta noted that e-mail had invited readers to "a rally against hatred and bigotry — is that disparaging to your clients?"
Circuit Judge Richard Clifton said he believes "there are eggshells on both sides" of this argument, yet he doesn't see what the e-mail had done to vilify Rederford and Christy while it's not hard to see how their flier vilified gays and lesbians. "It's hard to avoid the inference, 'We lack ethics, we lack integrity because these people are here.'"
9th Circuit endorses censoring Christians
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