In today’s news and commentary, the Ninth Circuit holds that the First Amendment rights of a school district employee aren’t violated when their employer makes them remove books expressing traditional views on gender identity, and a leading demographer warns that the U.S. labor market may face a severe labor shortage in the next decade.

On Tuesday, a majority of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the First Amendment rights of a fired school district employee in Oregon weren’t violated when his employer, the InterMountain Education Service District, made him remove books that expressed traditional views on gender identity in his office. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s order that denied the employee, Roderick Theis II, a preliminary injunction allowing him to continue displaying books. Theis displayed books including the titles “He is He” and “She is She” which conveyed themes that gender is binary and cannot be changed. The Ninth Circuit rejected Theis’s argument that his conduct was protected by the Constitution, writing that his conduct fell “outside the First Amendment’s ambit” because Theis displayed the books in a setting where he met with students to carry out his duties as an education specialist and his speech could not be meaningfully separated from his responsibilities.

Next, on Monday, Professor Steven Ruggles was reported as saying that the demand for young workers was going to “explode” over the next 10 to 15 years, leading to a severe labor shortage. Ruggles, a professor of history at the University of Minnesota and leading demographer, told CBS News that a wave of baby boomer retirements will coincide with smaller cohorts of young people entering the labor market, resulting in a smaller overall workforce. This could lead to an unprecedented situation where more workers leave the American workforce than enter it. According to Ruggles, “some people think AI is going to take away all jobs. But there are going to be very few people who are searching for jobs, relative to the size of the economy.” Ruggles’s demographic analysis offers a counterpoint to fears that AI will erode the job market: the coming shortage, he argues, will be of workers, not of work.