Meet "Jeremy", an officious, interfering director in a government department in Canberra. He's the worst kind of supervisor.

He judges his staff according to when they arrive and when they leave. He demands a team meeting every day, talks for too long and doesn't listen. He's swift to blame others when he cocks up.

And he monitors his team members' social-media accounts closely. Every now and then, he pulls an employee into his office and angrily warns them not to "like" any political comments - even innocuous, humorous posts.

From today, Jeremy no longer merely cites the Australian Public Service's social-media guidelines to back his over-the-top micromanagement. He now adds to his sermons: "I've got the full bench of the High Court behind me."

He doesn't, of course, but that's not the point. The verdict in Comcare v Banerji was a triumph for the Jeremys of the APS. And it was always likely to be, because the circumstances in which Immigration Department employee Michaela Banerji was sacked five years ago aren't closely relevant to most public servants.

Perhaps that's one of the reasons the Commonwealth funded this case: it was the precedent stacked in its favour.

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For years, the blurred boundaries of public servants' freedom of speech have caused confusion and even moral panic within the bureaucracy. Staff are uncertain about what they can and can't say, and even do, online.

But there was never much confusion about one thing: almost everyone knew it was unwise to bag your own department and ministers hundreds of times in public, even with a pseudonym. Almost everyone knew that Banerji didn't so much test the boundaries as leap over them and gallop well beyond.

The High Court's decision has a relatively narrow focus. It found the freedom of political communication implied in the constitution is minimal. It found Banerji was sacked justly because her "harsh or extreme" commentary undermined the perception she would perform her duties impartially.

But it offers nothing for public servants who just want to know the extent to which they can engage in mild political debate.

The decision will now likely be misinterpreted and used wrongly to justify ridiculous crackdowns by Jeremys in workplaces across the country, whether public or private sector. Public servants will no doubt continue to err on the side of cautious silence.

It could have been different; there were more relevant potential test cases. Like former SBS football reporter Scott McIntyre, sacked for tweeting about Australian soldiers' war crimes, which obviously had nothing to do with his job (his case was settled). Or former public servant Greg Jericho, who wrote (anonymously) the popular political blog Grog's Gamut (he was never punished, because his commentary could hardly be characterised as so "harsh or extreme" as to undermine his ability to be professionally impartial).

Instead, we have an unsurprisingly conservative ruling on a case that reflects the circumstances of very few employees in government. A pity.