![handle is hein.journals/ukalr68 and id is 1 raw text is:
Putting the 'Public' Back into Public
Employment: A Roadmap for Challenging Prior
Restraints That Prohibit Government Employees
from Speaking to the News Media
Frank D. LoMonte*
I. INTRODUCTION
In the weeks following a May 2018 shooting that took ten lives at a
high school in Santa Fe, a writer for the New Yorker revisited the Texas
community to see how those affected by the tragedy were coping.' One
unnamed police officer confided that he'd suffered sleepless nights and
been pushed to the edge of just how much my mind can take-but
readers learned nothing more about him, because, he explained, he was not
authorized to talk to the media.2
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker's administration has made
state employees so inaccessible for interviews that one journalist
complained he was unable even to speak with a state ornithologist for a
routine story about the declining population of barn swallows.3 In New
York, the director of the New York State Museum retired in frustration
over the rigid control of information under Governor Andrew Cuomo's
administration, telling a reporter that his staff couldn't even respond to
* Professor & Director of the Joseph L. Brechner Center for Freedom of Information at the
University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida; B.A., 1992, Political Science, Georgia State University;
J.D. (Order of the Coif), 2000, University of Georgia School of Law. The author is grateful to David
Jadon for his invaluable research assistance during his time at the University of Florida's Levin
School of Law.
1. Carolyn Kormann, Back to School after the Shooting in Santa Fe, NEW YORKER (June 2, 2018),
https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/back-to-school-in-santa-fe [https://perma.cc/R9AB-5KKV].
2. Id.
3. David Abel, On Subjects from Birds to Pollution, State Scientists Are Barred from Speaking to the
Globe, Bos. GLOBE (May 13, 2019, 6:30 AM), https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/05/13/from-
birds-pollution-state-scientists-are-barred-from-speaking-globe/SN3YSh3FdpOfkG8iD1KlYI/story.html
[https://perma.cc/UX2J-UDUC] [hereinafter Abel, On Subjects from Birds to Pollution]; David Abel, A Flap
Over Barn Swallows Raises Larger Concerns About a Bird in Decline, Bos. GLOBE (May 11, 2019, 7:06
PM), https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/05/11/flap-over-barn-swallows-raises-larger-concerns-abo
ut-bird-decine/iJpekuqpWejXVG5rCLfvCIJstory.html?pl=Article InlineText Link
[https://perma.cc/ZK72-VUB4].
1](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/ukalr68&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most