What the fuck is 'permission to testify'? I thought access to justice was a constitutional right. If you can't get anyone to tesrify, then you have no access to justice.
We have surrendered so many rights in various contracts, we hardly have any freedoms left.
>"the university denied requests of these full-time employees to undertake outside paid work that is adverse to the university's interests as a state of Florida institution."
This seems reasonable to me; if they want to testify to express themselves, they can still do it pro-bono, otherwise, they should probably seek non-government employment.
Broadly speaking in the US everyone has many constitutional protections against the government restricting them in certain ways. When you become a government employee you give up only the most narrow subset of the protections necessary for the government to effectively be your boss.
This means the professors have a reasonably strong court case as mentioned by their lawyer in TFA.
See for example https://www.popehat.com/2013/09/05/ninth-circuit-clarifies-f...
> First a court must determine whether or not the speech is on a matter of public interest. Speech on matters of public interest are entitled to protection, even when uttered by employees; speech on purely private matters (like, say, a private and internal spat among employees) is not. Then the court must balance the employer's interest in an orderly and efficient workplace against the speech rights of the employee, taking into account things like whether the speech restriction is content-based (that is, whether it censors some viewpoints but not others), the circumstances of the speech, the strength of the employee's interest in the speech, whether the speech genuinely disrupts discipline and order and interferes with relationships, and so on.
The process that stopped the professors was not one for restricting additional work in general, but one for restricting additional work based on a conflict of interest. Since they are a public University their ability to limit free speech like this is more limited than a private institution as iudqnolq mentioned above.
If the University of Florida has a general rule for restricting any additional work by default for professors they are an outlier among Universities.
Public university serves the public, no?
So then the argument is the anticipated testimony wrt voting rights would be detrimental to the public interest?
The government, or in this case the University of Florida, is not supposed to be the ultimate authority of what is is the best interest of the public, the public is supposed to be the ultimate authority. The first amendment serves as protection from the government 'self dealing', looking out for their own interests and not the public's, by preventing them from stifling or limiting speech.
> Public university serves the public, no?
Yes and because they are public university their ability to limit their employee's speech is limited compared to a private institution.
Also, did amazom workers voluntarily sign up to pee in bottles?
I suspect this means to function as a (voluntary) expert witness, not as someone formally required to testify.