Not at all. It's just one more case of a judicial conservative becoming a judicial activist when his ox is being gored.
His free speech, as a public employee, ends at the free exercise clause Professor. So does yours. You take a check from the state, you live by their rules. I make my own rules.
Point me in the direction of a legal decision that says being a state employee removes my right to free speech. State employees have the same rights as you have, bud.
Nothing in my employment contract says anything about letters of recommendation. I don't have to ever write one, if I don't want to. They're entirely at my discretion. And certainly, I consider the fact that a student has religious beliefs that contradict basic science to be entirely relevant to an assessment of the student. As I said at the time, my own course of action would be to state in the letter that the student does not accept an evolutionary origin of species, and leave the decision to the medical school admissions committee, who are in the best position to decide if this will impair his abilities as a physician. But IMO, it was Dini's prerogative to decide instead not to write a letter at all.
No, if the free exercise clause was violated that is much more eggregious. Dimi changing the wording can be seen as a tacit admission that that was just what he was doing. If he was not doing that then both cases are equally eggregious.
I suspect he just didn't want to waste his time on a lawsuit.
Announce on your university website that any student who self identifies as a creationist can not get a recommendation from you no matter the grade they got in your class.
Or better yet announce on your website that creationists can not go to med school.
What the hell, maybe its time to give the private sector a shot.
What I want to know is, when exactly did a letter of recommendation become an entitlement?
I bet it was right after I graduated... (grumble grumble)