A U.S. Supreme Court decision not only strikes a blow for free speech, it shows this court can line up in ways that confound conventional wisdom about its ideological divide.
In a 7-2 released Wednesday, justices sided with a Transportation Security Administration air marshal who challenged his firing for having disclosed what he saw as lapses in aviation security.
Robert MacLean believed that a 2003 TSA plan to dramatically scale back the deployment of air marshals — even in the face of credible terror plots — due to fiscal concerns would post a serious security threat. And he talked to an MSNBC reporter about his concerns.
The TSA said he violated rules about disclosing sensitive information, and he was fired.
However, rules are not laws, and the justices made clear that distinction.
Whistleblowers are protected by federal law that keeps the government from firing them for what they say, unless the disclosures are specifically prohibited by law.
“… Congress passed the whistleblower statute precisely because it did not trust agencies to regulate whistleblowers within their ranks,” the decision said.
The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, also drew the support of a collection of the court’s liberals and conservatives: Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan.
Dissenting were Sonia Sotomayor and Anthony Kennedy.
In an era of predictable 5-4 decisions on the court, it was refreshing to see such a diverse coalition of justices in this case, particularly in a large majority.
The win for whistleblowers also was a rarity, and a welcome decision. All too often those who speak out in an effort to call attention to something they believe is wrong are unceremoniously crushed by government, to the detriment of the public interest.
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