• Sonja Starr

2026

Public Law & Legal Theory Research

This essay analyzes, from a First Amendment perspective, the second Trump administration’s efforts to align the federal workforce with its ideological preferences. The administration has broad powers to reshape the executive branch’s policy priorities and its messaging. But as I show with examples across the civil, military, and foreign services, it has gone beyond exercising those powers, retaliating against and restricting employees’ protected private speech and incorporating viewpoint- based conditions into hiring. These actions reflect a constitutional vision that stretches existing limits on public employee rights and, for many employees, subordinates those rights entirely when they conflict with purported Article II powers. This vision is doctrinally indefensible and poses a serious threat to democracy and free expression.

Starr, Sonja, "The First Amendment, Federal Employees, and the War on the “Deep State”" (2026). Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers. .
https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/public_law_and_legal_theory/991

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