LINCOLN, Neb. — The Nebraska Supreme Court has upheld a ruling that inflammatory remarks an Omaha police officer made against city and police bosses in a union newspaper shouldn’t have led to his firing.

In 2005, police officer Kevin Housh was fired for writing an opinion piece that was sharply critical of city and police officials. Housh was later reinstated, but the police union said the city had interfered with the rights of union members to engage in protected labor speech.

The state Commission on Industrial Relations agreed, but on appeal the state high court asked the commission to reconsider its decision and use a lower standard when deciding whether Housh’s speech was protected. The commission was asked to decide whether Housh’s comments constituted “flagrant misconduct” instead of a “deliberate and reckless untruth.”

The commission ruled that the comments were not flagrant misconduct. The high court upheld that decision in its ruling released on Jan. 2, even though it suggested it disagreed with the commission. The high court’s authority to overturn or change commission decisions is somewhat limited.

“Had this court conducted its own review of Housh’s conduct, the result might have been different,” Judge John Wright wrote in the court’s opinion in Omaha Police Union Local 101 v. City of Omaha. “Housh’s article appeared in a newsletter circulated outside the union. Housh stated city officials were ‘acting like petty criminals trying to conceal some kind of crime.’”

The high court’s ruling only applies to speech made in the course of union business.

Assistant Omaha City Attorney Bernard in den Bosch said the court loss didn’t come as a surprise, because of the deference the high court must give the commission. He said he saw an upside in the decision.

The court’s earlier order for the commission to apply the standard of “flagrant misconduct” instead of the harder-to-meet “deliberate and reckless untruth” threshold creates a precedent that is “more skewed to the employer,” in den Bosch said.