Free speech has its limits
The US Supreme Court has overturned an Appeals Court\'s ruling in favour of a police officer who was sacked for selling sexually explicit videos of himself over the Internet.
The Los Angeles Times reports the Supreme Court rejected the police officer\'s 1st Amendment\'s free speech protection argument. The government \'may impose certain restraints on the speech of its employees that would be unconstitutional if applied to the general public,\' the Supreme Court said. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled a public employee\'s \'off-duty, non-work-related speech\' usually could not be the basis for punishing him. Separately, the justices turned away a free speech claim by members of the Ku Klux Klan who maintained that they had a right to rally in public with hoods over their faces. Full report in the Los Angeles Times