When Cities And Other Entities Prevent You From Speaking Your Mind, Is That Any Different From Soviet Russia? What's Next A Gulag?

Hand over your 1st Amendment rights if you want to do a job for this Tennessee town

Posted on December 17, 2014 by Ben Bullard

A small Tennessee town has deployed a new tactic in the ongoing effort to shield elected officials from scrutiny and criticism: force anyone who works for the city to promise not to say anything bad about its leaders on Facebook and other social platforms.

The five-member city commission of South Pittsburg, Tennessee, voted earlier this month to adopt a social media policy that, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press, forbids city workers, elected officials and contractors from saying “anything negative about the city, its employees or other associates… Examples include posted videos, blogs, online forum discussions, Facebook and Twitter, Commissioner Jeff Powers said.”

The commission approved the policy on a 4-1 vote. Commissioner Paul Don King cast the single opposing vote, saying the city can’t tell people what to say on their own time.”[W]hat we [the board] are trying to say is that if I’m a city employee, you’re trying to tell me what I can say at night,” he told the paper. “I call that freedom of speech. I can’t understand that.”

Plenty of employers place conditions of employment on their employees, and often that includes restrictions on information sharing and, yes, overt criticism. But the employers in this instance happen to include duly elected representatives of the people, and this policy essentially bans employees and contractors — as citizens — from speaking ill of those elected leaders.

Officials in favor of the policy said it’s designed to prevent chronic cases of outright slander against the city, its component administrative units and their individual leaders.

“Criticism is one thing; Out-and-out lies and untruths — that’s another thing,” Mayor Jane Dawkins said.

She’s right — and there’s already a legal recourse for those harmed by “out-and-out lies and untruths.” But it’s one that the city’s leaders appear to be willing to ignore in favor of a policy that makes them the arbiters of free political speech.