## Facts

- Virginia enacted a statute barring state employees from using state-owned or state-leased computers to access, download, print, or store “sexually explicit” material.
- The statute allowed access only with prior, written agency approval for a “bona fide, agency-approved research project or other agency-approved undertaking.”
- Six professors at Virginia public colleges and universities alleged their teaching and research required access to sexually explicit materials and that the statute chilled their work.
- The professors sued the Governor in his official capacity, asserting the statute violated the First Amendment.
- The district court granted summary judgment for the professors and held the statute unconstitutional.
- A Fourth Circuit panel reversed, and the court later reheard the case en banc.

## Issues

1. Whether Virginia’s restriction on state employees’ access to sexually explicit material on state-owned or state-leased computers violates the First Amendment.
2. Whether public university professors have an individual constitutional right of academic freedom that limits the state’s regulation of employee use of government computers for research and teaching.
3. Whether the statute’s requirement of prior written approval for bona fide research adequately protects any First Amendment interests implicated.

## Decision

- The en banc Fourth Circuit reversed the district court and upheld the statute as constitutional.
- The court treated the restriction as regulation of employee conduct and speech in the workplace using government property, not as a general restriction on private speech.
- The court held that public employees, including professors, have no First Amendment entitlement, as employees, to access sexually explicit materials on state equipment beyond what the approval scheme permits.
- The court rejected the asserted individual constitutional right of academic freedom as a basis to invalidate the statute, reasoning that any constitutional academic freedom interest is primarily institutional rather than personal.
- The court viewed the prior written approval process for bona fide research as a permissible supervisory mechanism in the employment setting rather than an unconstitutional prior restraint.

## Legal Principles

- When the government acts as employer, it has broad discretion to manage its workplace and control the use of government-owned resources, including computers.
- Public-employee First Amendment protection is strongest when an employee speaks as a citizen on matters of public concern; restrictions tied to official capacity and workplace property receive more deferential review.
- Constitutional “academic freedom,” to the extent recognized, does not create a freestanding individual right for public university faculty to disregard generally applicable rules governing the use of state property in their employment.
- An internal permission requirement for accessing restricted material on government equipment may be permissible where it functions as workplace supervision and permits access when required for approved duties.

## Conclusion

The Fourth Circuit upheld Virginia’s restriction on accessing sexually explicit material via state computers, concluding that the Commonwealth could regulate employee use of its equipment and that public university professors lacked an individual constitutional academic freedom right that would override the state’s workplace rule and approval process.


Urofsky v. Gilmore, 216 F.3d 401 (4th Cir. 2000)