U.S. Supreme Court Won’t Hear Case of Teacher Fired for Conservative Views

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up the case of a Massachusetts teacher who was fired because of her pre-employment conservative social media posts.

Former Hanover Public Schools teacher Kari MacRae asked the Court to take up her case in September 2024, disputing her firing based on her First Amendment right to free speech.

Just one month after taking up her position as a math and business teacher, MacRae’s school principal Matthew Mattos informed her that he was opening an investigation into her social media posts, which she made before being hired, and was placing her on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.

Days later, Mattos fired her, stating, “I have determined that continuing your employment in light of your social media posts would have a significant impact on student learning at HHS.”

What were these social media posts, you ask?

As recounted by Justice Clarence Thomas in a statement explaining his agreement with the Court’s decision not to hear MacRae’s case, the posts included MacRae liking, sharing, posting or reposting six memes “expressing her views that immigration laws should be enforced, that an individual’s sex is immutable, and that society should be racially color-blind.”

Hardly the thing of nightmares.

After MacRae originally filed her lawsuit in November 2021, the district court ruled against her, as did the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, leading MacRae to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Court did not say why it decided not to hear the case. But in his seven-page statement, Justice Thomas said he agreed with the decision because MacRae’s petition did “not squarely challenge the First Circuit’s application” of the Supreme Court’s framework for public-employee speech.

Nevertheless, Justice Thomas explained that he was writing separately “to raise serious concerns about the First Circuit’s approach” to MacRae’s case.

He thoroughly explained why, in his view, the First Circuit improperly applied the U.S. Supreme Court’s Pickering balancing test to MacRae’s case. In Pickering, the Court laid out a test for balancing government employers’ interest in regulating its employees’ speech, and employees’ right to free speech.

Justice Thomas explained that the First Circuit devalued MacRae’s speech because she, at times, spoke in a “mocking, derogatory, and disparaging manner,” to use the First Circuit’s language.

But as Justice Thomas asserted, “I do not see how the tone of MacRae’s posts can bear on the weight of her First Amendment interest. … We have declined to ‘affor[d] less than full First Amendment protection’ even for speech that we have deemed ‘particularly hurtful.’”

Worse still, the First Circuit only speculated that MacRae’s posts might disrupt the workplace, rather than citing substantial and concrete evidence.

Indeed, the First Circuit said MacRae’s speech might cause a disruption because her viewpoints conflict with Hanover’s “Core Value of [r]espect[ing] … human differences.”

Of course, you could say firing someone for controversial political posts also conflicts with the “core value” of “respecting human differences.” But neither the First Circuit, nor Hanover Public Schools, seemed to see that irony.

As Justice Thomas explained,

“The problem is exacerbated in the case of an employee such as MacRae, who expressed her views only outside the workplace and before her employment.”

This led Justice Thomas to conclude, “The First Circuit failed to conduct a proper balancing inquiry because it improperly discounted MacRae’s First Amendment interest.”

He added,

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, which filed the lawsuit on MacRae’s behalf, issued a statement after the Court’s decision.

“Let’s cut to the chase: Kari MacRae was fired because she spoke out against woke critical race theory before she was hired,” Fitton said, adding,

The case is Kari MacRae v. Matthew Mattos.

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