Avis Rent A Car System, Inc. v. Aguilar
The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from Avis Rent A Car and an employee who had been ordered never to utter a list of racial slurs at work, leaving the California courts' injunction in place without explanation.
Justice Thomas dissented from the denial, arguing the injunction was an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech that the Court should have reviewed rather than let stand untested.
How it got here: A California trial court entered an injunction after a jury found harassment; a state appeals court narrowed it; the California Supreme Court affirmed; the employer and employee asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review, which denied certiorari.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Latino drivers at Avis Rent A Car's San Francisco airport location sued a coworker, John Lawrence, and Avis under California's Fair Employment and Housing Act, alleging Lawrence repeatedly used slurs and unwanted touching against them because of their race and national origin. A jury awarded damages, and the trial court also issued an injunction permanently barring Lawrence from using a list of derogatory words at work.
The question before the Court
Should the Supreme Court have reviewed a court order banning a rental-car employee from ever using certain slurs at work?
The Court's answer
The Court did not answer this question — it simply denied review, meaning the California Supreme Court's decision and the injunction against the employee remain in place without any explanation from the majority. No opinion accompanied the denial explaining why the Court passed on the case.
Justice Thomas dissented, arguing the Court should have granted review because the injunction likely violates the First Amendment as an overbroad prior restraint on protected speech, and because money damages — not a lifetime speech ban — would have been the appropriate remedy. His view did not carry the day, and the underlying legal question remains unresolved nationally.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Because the Court refused to take the case, the California injunction barring the employee from ever saying certain words at work remains in force, and no nationwide rule was set for how far courts can go in policing workplace speech through injunctions rather than damages awards. Employers and workers elsewhere get no fresh guidance from the Supreme Court on this issue.
What changes now
Because certiorari was denied, the California Supreme Court's decision and the underlying injunction against Lawrence remain in effect. No further proceedings occur in this case at the Supreme Court, and no nationwide precedent was set on the First Amendment questions raised. The issue remains open for another case to bring back to the Court in the future.
What this does not decide
A denial of certiorari is not a ruling on the merits — it does not mean the Supreme Court agreed with the California courts or rejected Justice Thomas's First Amendment concerns. The underlying question of whether such workplace-speech injunctions violate the First Amendment remains legally unresolved by the Supreme Court.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Thomas
“Any system of prior restraints of expression comes to this Court bearing a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity.”Thomas invokes the strong presumption against court orders that block speech before it happens.
Justice Thomas argued the Court should have granted review because the injunction barring Lawrence from ever using certain words at work is likely an unconstitutional prior restraint on fully protected speech. He argued the injunction was not narrowly tailored, banning even isolated remarks made outside anyone's hearing, and that money damages for future violations would have been a less restrictive remedy. He found neither the sparse case law nor the incomplete factual record a good reason to avoid the issue.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court denied review without issuing any opinion of its own, so no majority reasoning explains the decision not to hear the case.
- Justice Thomas, dissenting from the denial, argued that court orders restraining speech in advance — known as prior restraints — receive the strictest First Amendment scrutiny because they stop speech before it happens rather than punishing it afterward.
- He contended the words banned by the injunction were not an unprotected category like fighting words or obscenity, and that applying a content-based law to pure workplace speech would require changing existing First Amendment doctrine.
- Thomas also argued the injunction was not narrowly tailored because it banned even a single isolated remark, regardless of whether any Latino employee could hear it, and ignored that money damages could adequately deter future harassment.
- Because the Court denied certiorari, none of these arguments were adopted or rejected by a majority; they remain only the dissenting justice's view.