The professors were looking to make money by testifying against the interests of their employer's parent organization:
>"the university denied requests of these full-time employees to undertake outside paid work that is adverse to the university's interests as a state of Florida institution."
This seems reasonable to me; if they want to testify to express themselves, they can still do it pro-bono, otherwise, they should probably seek non-government employment.
The supreme court has historically taken a more nuanced stance on this sort of issue than you.
Broadly speaking in the US everyone has many constitutional protections against the government restricting them in certain ways. When you become a government employee you give up only the most narrow subset of the protections necessary for the government to effectively be your boss.
This means the professors have a reasonably strong court case as mentioned by their lawyer in TFA.
> First a court must determine whether or not the speech is on a matter of public interest. Speech on matters of public interest are entitled to protection, even when uttered by employees; speech on purely private matters (like, say, a private and internal spat among employees) is not. Then the court must balance the employer's interest in an orderly and efficient workplace against the speech rights of the employee, taking into account things like whether the speech restriction is content-based (that is, whether it censors some viewpoints but not others), the circumstances of the speech, the strength of the employee's interest in the speech, whether the speech genuinely disrupts discipline and order and interferes with relationships, and so on.
The critical question here is whether the University is restricting alternate employment or speech. It seems reasonable that a full-time employee on salary be prohibited from accepting simultaneous alternative employment in their primary field of work.
On the contractor-employee continuum, professors are really closer to contractors than they are full time employees. Critically, professors are not “full time” from an annual timeframe. They are salaried, yes, but maybe only work for 9/12 months per year. Their salaries are commensurately lowered. Therefore many professors take outside contract jobs during those 3 months to make up the difference. Contracting arrangements, including serving as expert witnesses. are so common that it’s usually built into the Faculty “constitution” or whatever it may be called at UoF.
> The critical question here is whether the University is restricting alternate employment or speech.
The process that stopped the professors was not one for restricting additional work in general, but one for restricting additional work based on a conflict of interest. Since they are a public University their ability to limit free speech like this is more limited than a private institution as iudqnolq mentioned above.
If the University of Florida has a general rule for restricting any additional work by default for professors they are an outlier among Universities.
> So then the argument is the anticipated testimony wrt voting rights would be detrimental to the public interest?
The government, or in this case the University of Florida, is not supposed to be the ultimate authority of what is is the best interest of the public, the public is supposed to be the ultimate authority. The first amendment serves as protection from the government 'self dealing', looking out for their own interests and not the public's, by preventing them from stifling or limiting speech.
> Public university serves the public, no?
Yes and because they are public university their ability to limit their employee's speech is limited compared to a private institution.
>"the university denied requests of these full-time employees to undertake outside paid work that is adverse to the university's interests as a state of Florida institution."
This seems reasonable to me; if they want to testify to express themselves, they can still do it pro-bono, otherwise, they should probably seek non-government employment.