Justices Deny Fired FAU Professor James Tracy Who Questioned Sandy Hook

2 years ago 212

TALLAHASSEE (CBSMiami/NSF) – The U.S. Supreme Court connected Monday declined to instrumentality up an entreaty by a erstwhile Florida Atlantic University prof who contended helium was fired successful retaliation for blog posts questioning the 2012 massacre astatine Sandy Hook Elementary School successful Connecticut.

Justices, arsenic is common, did not explicate their reasons for declining to perceive the lawsuit filed by James Tracy, who contended that the assemblage violated his First Amendment rights.

Tracy, who was fired successful precocious 2015 from his tenured station successful the university’s School of Communications and Multimedia Studies, took the lawsuit to the Supreme Court aft losing successful U.S. territory tribunal and astatine the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Tracy drew wide attraction for blog posts questioning whether the Sandy Hook massacre — successful which a gunman killed 20 children and six adults — had occurred. In a petition asking the Supreme Court to instrumentality up the case, Tracy’s attorneys described the blog, which was not portion of the university, arsenic “notorious and wide criticized.”

But Tracy’s attorneys took purpose astatine a assemblage conflict-of-interest argumentation that requires module members to disclose extracurricular activities. The entreaty alleged that the assemblage utilized the argumentation “as purported justification to terminate” Tracy for not disclosing accusation astir the blog.

The petition, filed astatine the Supreme Court successful July, contended that the argumentation was unconstitutionally vague, chilled code and gave the assemblage “unbridled discretion to prosecute successful content-based viewpoint favoritism against employees.”

“(The) vagueness of the argumentation is peculiarly unsafe due to the fact that it operates to inhibit the cardinal First Amendment state of nationalist assemblage employees to talk connected issues of nationalist interest and prosecute successful different expressive conduct,” the petition said. “It is wholly unclear, for example, whether the argumentation applies to code enactment specified arsenic uncompensated idiosyncratic blogging, societal media posting, oregon adjacent nonfiction and op-ed writing.”

But successful a little filed successful October, attorneys for the assemblage wrote that Tracy’s “blog code was not a motivating origin successful FAU’s determination to discharge him from employment.”

The little said Tracy was fired for “gross insubordination” aft helium refused to comply with reporting requirements that were portion of a module corporate bargaining agreement.

“As some the territory tribunal and the Eleventh Circuit observed, Tracy is successful this presumption for 1 reason: He obstinately refused, for reasons helium has ne'er cogently explained, to simply implicit the required disclosure report,” the little said.

In rejecting Tracy’s arguments successful November 2020, a three-judge sheet of the Atlanta-based appeals tribunal upheld a jury’s determination connected the First Amendment contented and a territory judge’s rulings against Tracy connected different issues.

“To found that helium was discharged successful retaliation for protected speech, plaintiff had to prove, among different things, that his code played a ‘substantial part’ successful the university’s determination to terminate him,” the appeals-court sentiment said. “The assemblage recovered that plaintiff had failed to bash so, arsenic it recovered that plaintiff’s blog code was not a motivating origin successful the university’s decision. We reason that determination was much than capable grounds to enactment the jury’s verdict.”

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