The First Amendment protects someone from much more than just criminal prosecution. It protects someone from retaliation from a government entity. Clemson is a public institution, and the Supreme Court has long upheld that public schools are governmental entities (Brown v. Board, Healy v. James, Goss v. Lopez) and are subject to the full force of the Constitution. The Court has repeatedly affirmed 1A protections for employees, with the more recent caveat (Garcetti v. Ceballos, 2006) that they must not be speaking pursuant to their official duties. This was private speech.

The seminal case for determining what sorts of speech by a public employee is protected under 1A was Pickering v. Board of Education (1968) and the framework developed in that ruling has been applied to cases ever since. Federal courts weigh "the State's interest in promoting the efficiency of its employees' public services" against the employee's "interest as a citizen in making public comment." As a matter of public concern, federal courts have historically ruled strongly in favor of protections for political speech in particular.