You ready?

I was born ready.

Welcome to the Advisory Opinions Podcast. This is David French with Sarah Isger.

We have heard your requests. We have gotten a number of emails. A surprising number of emails who said, you know what?

I'd really love it if you had on a progressive legal guest.

And just fortuitously, Sarah had written an awesome article in Politico about making it easier to amend the Constitution.

And did Professor Levinson reach out to you, Sarah?

Yes, my professor in law.

Yeah, your professor in law. So it's one of Scott's University of Texas professors named Sanford Levinson reached out because he has been doing an enormous amount of work talking about making it easier to amend the Constitution and what would an amended Constitution look like.

And so we're super delighted that he's joining us today for this podcast.

And so we're going to we're going to have a great discussion with him. He's just a delightful guest, thoughtful guest. I know you're going to enjoy this conversation.

So that's coming up here in a bit.

But before we get going, there's a couple of legal developments that are worth talking about. And the first is a certain grant in what's going to be a pretty darn interesting first amendment case, one that we've already talked about before.

And this is a case called Kennedy versus Burmerton school district. And here are the issues. Number one, whether a public school employee who says a brief quiet prayer by himself while at school invisible to students is engaged in government speech that lacks any first to member protection.

And number two, assuming that such a religious expression is private and protected by the free speech and for exercise clauses, the establishment clause and nevertheless compels public schools to prohibit it. Now, if you would remember, this is the case of the praying football coach,

a football coach who would after being asked to refrain from praying with team with the team or members of the team or that he would kind of walk off by himself after a football game to pray and pray publicly.

And was disciplined for that activity as well. And we talked about that a lot at the time. And and got it actually an interesting email from folks who had personal knowledge of the case, but Sarah, what's your initial response to the cert grant?

Boy, this term is just really, yeah, I the feast is too much. I am so full, David, but but I'll eat more. I mean, if you know, if you're going to serve me delicious chocolate moose at the end of the meal, like I'm going to keep scurfin.

Yeah, this is going to be a very interesting case because it, you know, as we've discussed before, if you are a public employee, you are not what would be the right proper legal term, Sarah, you're not exactly swimming in first amendment rights.

You're not exactly drowning in the first amendment when you're a public employee on the job. Now, and so we know from Garcetti, the Savalis that basically every public employee with the exception of university professors engaged in teaching and scholarship, if they are on the job, if they are speaking and acting in their capacity as a public employee, they basically don't have first amendment rights in the same way they are.

They are just, they're, this is, and this is something that's really come up a great deal in the context of the anti-CRT legislation, how much can a state legislature control the speech of public school teachers and the general default legal answer is pretty much totally is the is where most of the case law is.

Interesting question because the, the coach is finished coaching, he's still on school grounds, he's still theoretically is engaged in responsibilities of a, of a high school football coach.

...