The courage to expose wrongdoing

Most everybody believes at some level that government wrongdoing exists. The day has long waned since Mark Twain said, “It can probably be proved with facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” The decades since those words were uttered has been sporadically rocked with government wrongdoing, cover-ups and denial. This is nothing new, you say. You’re right. Yet once in a while some honest employee, government or corporate, will try to stand up for the truth, to expose wrongdoing. And for their trouble they often pay a price. Well, the price got a little heavier earlier this week when the U.S. Supreme Court slapped the American people in the face with a ruling that essentially gives government the go-ahead to punish employees who challenge wrongdoing and take it public.

For those who still believe your government is always honest and benevolent, one brief lesson from history should make the point. You may remember the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in Macon County, Alabama. Covering the period from 1932 to 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service studied 399 black men with syphilis and 201 who did not have the disease. Those with the disease were misinformed about their condition and denied treatment, ostensibly for research reasons. Just one more instance of the witches brew of scientific prostitutes and their government overseers working at the behest of corporate puppet masters. Anyway, little rumblings about the experiment surfaced now and again. But, in true government/corporate form, anyone speaking out against government veracity was branded as a conspiratorialist or just plain anti-American. Sound familiar? Anyway, things began to fall apart, and in 1972 (it only took 40 years), the truth finally began to come out. It took another quarter-century before the federal government admitted the full truth about Tuskegee.

Fast forward to May 2006 and the Supreme Court action regarding Los Angeles County prosecutor Richard Ceballos, who had been demoted and denied a promotion allegedly for urging his supervisors to drop a criminal case after he provided evidence of wrongdoing by the arresting officer. A few twists and turns landed his case in the U.S. Supreme Court. The question put before the court was whether government employees have free speech rights that protect them while they carry out their duties. Well, the Supremes voted 5-4 on Tuesday to nuke Ceballos’ rights. Speaking for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the First Amendment does not protect “every statement a public employee makes in the course of his or her job.” True Anthony, a government health inspector doesn’t have the right to yell “fire” in a crowded theather! But perhaps the letter of the law is not what is at stake here.

Speaking in dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said, “Public employees are still citizens while they are in office. The notion that there is a categorical difference between speaking as a citizen and speaking in the course of one’s employment is quite wrong.” Stevens position, while not lurking with stealth in the letter of the law, found itself on the side of the people, in the spirit of the law.

The bottom line, now coming from the Supremes themselves, is whistleblowers beware. Your local, state or federal government will make you pay for your honesty if you try to expose wrongdoing. So will many private companies. So will the same state legislatures and Congress who fail to put real teeth in whistleblower laws. And in lock-step, the Supreme Court has failed the American people on this issue.

We raise our kids teaching them to be honest, telling them that honesty is the best policy. The action this week by the Supreme Court is troubling. It provides yet another disincentive for people to muster the courage to expose wrongdoing.