By PETER HALL The Morning Call
A PennDOT worker’s Facebook rant about smashing into careless school bus drivers is not protected by the First Amendment, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled.
The rant cost Rachel L. Carr her job in 2016 after other members of the Facebook group where she made the posts sent screenshots to PennDOT. Carr appealed to the State Civil Service Commission, which upheld her termination.
A Commonwealth Court decision reinstated Carr after finding that her comments were protected speech, but the Supreme Court on Tuesday disagreed and upheld Carr’s firing.
The justices found Carr’s rant held little public importance and interfered with PennDOT’s mission of public safety, two of the factors courts must consider in determining whether a public employee’s speech is protected.
Under a 1968 U.S. Supreme Court decision, public employees can be fired for comments on issues of public interest only when their employer can show a negative result is likely.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court established additional factors to determine whether speech is protected, including whether the remarks prevent the agency from carrying out its responsibilities; prevent the employee from carrying out his or her own responsibilities; interfere with working relationships; and how, when and where the remarks are made.
“While there is no present dispute whether Carr’s comments touched on a matter of public concern, they were essentially a rant based on her personal observation of a particular bus driver rather than an explanation of safety concerns that she became aware of as a department employee,” Justice Sallie Updyke Mundy wrote.
According to the opinion, Carr posted in the “Creeps and Peeps” Facebook group May 24, 2016, that she was frustrated with school bus drivers in the Erie area, calling them “horrible” and “hella scary.” She said school buses ran her off the road daily and one asked her “to t-bone it.”
“I don’t give a s— about those little babies and I will gladly smash into a school bus,” Carr wrote. When other members of the group suggested she should care more about the safety of children, Carr doubled down, saying she would put her safety before that of schoolchildren, the opinion says.
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