Teacher Speech Inside and Outside of Classrooms in the United States: Understanding the First Amendment

Concerns often arise about the First Amendment rights of public school educators in the United States both inside and outside of their classrooms. As such, after setting the legal context, we analyze teachers’ free speech rights in a variety of settings. In order to do so, we discuss illustrative cases analyzing the legal landscape of teachers’ free expressions rights in U.S. public schools. The purpose of this article is to provide a brief overview highlighting Supreme Court cases and selected opinions from lower courts involving teacher speech impact the expressive rights of educators in public schools rather than serve as a comprehensive analysis of all such speech cases.