Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Let a Million E-Mails Bloom

A ruling by an administrative law judge might deserve special note on the ASU campus, where a hysterical fear of expressing political opinions via e-mail ensued after Madame Virginia Foxx pitched a fit last year that ASU professors were expressing disdain for her.

Two government employees, both subject to the Hatch Act, were found not guilty of violating restrictions on partisan politics when they forwarded political e-mails.

Background: Last Oct. 25th, one of the workers used a government computer to send 22 people an e-mail titled "Why I am Supporting John Kerry for President." It contained a letter, purportedly written by the son of former Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower, touting Democrat John F. Kerry for president. The other worker, a recipient of the first e-mail, then forwarded to 27 people an e-mail that urged people to vote for "the party that stands firm on morally and ethically correct issues as written in the [B]ible." The e-mail also contained a picture of President Bush in front of an American flag and the statement "I Vote the Bible."

Open and shut case? Certainly, the federal thought police wanted both employees fired. But the judge said no. He ruled that the e-mails "amounted to the electronic equivalent of a discussion of politics around the office water cooler, something that is legal." The judge wrote, "an expression of personal opinion does not constitute political activity merely because it is disseminated to two dozen individuals with one or several computer keystrokes."

The ruling is being appealed.

Not that the Hatch Act and ASU's rule against political expression via computer are the same animal. But ASU's squelching of free speech has never been tested, so far as we know, and it's high time someone did. If the "electronic water cooler" standard holds up for federal employees, it ought to be even easier to defend for professors at a public university.

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