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Man arguably mocks Gold Star spouse- terminated from employment

Irrelevant... or so it ought to be.
A client taking $100.000 in business to a competitor because they were dismayed and offended reading some ass jackery on an employees social media is irrelevant?
 
First, it was a teacher placed on administrative leave for encouraging others to turn in illegal aliens on social media. The speech was deemed to somehow have impacted her ability to teach. Now, it is a financial employee being canned because he arguably mocked a Gold Star spouse. His tweet was deemed "not to be consistent with the values of the company".

Ex-Clinton volunteer slammed, loses job, after swipe at widow of fallen SEAL | Fox News

I am aware that the suppression of speech by private parties does not constitute censorship. Then there is the irony of:

Suppression / punishment of free speech by private parties is a good thing- so long as only the "right" people are being suppressed or punished. Of course, people who think like I do are not the "right" people. Rather, these people were misunderstood, taken out of context, need a second chance etc.

Member Blackjack has stated that the time is ripe for a new ruling on how far employers can go in suppressing or punishing speech occurring off their property and off company time. I am in full agreement with him.Obviously anything can be construed to have impacted job performance or to be inconsistent with values etc. Enough is enough and new guidelines are needed.

There are questions about how this is applied to state and federal agencies, but in the case of private businesses they have every right to fire someone if they are negatively impacting the company with their social media posts.

Imagine Hobby Lobby being forced to keep on a person that posts pro-pedophile comments on social media.
 
The First Amendment has been fully incorporated to the states and local government. It applies to ALL levels of government, not just the federal government. True. It's not just social media. If you put a pro-KKK bumper sticker on your car that you drive to and from, or for work, and your employer determines that that reflects badly on the company and can impact the company's ability to earn money, they can ask you to remove it, or find a new place to work.

No the first amendment applies only to federal government. If state constitutions have incorporated similar government restrictions then that is a different matter and a positive thing. These concepts restrict government, not the private sector. Yes, companies can and should be able to terminate employees that do not meet the company's employment standards.

Like some on the left like to say, which I agree with, you have the right to say what you want, but you do not have the right to not be called out and held accountable for what you say.

Yes, all speech, including free speech, carries consequences with it.
 
Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. Would you say, for example, that if I'm a trash collector for Waste Pro and I decide to use a Confederate battle flag as my Facebook avatar, Waste Pro has the right to fire me? Confederate flags are, after all, clearly offensive to a large body of the populace. How does my act reflect on my employer or hamper my ability to do my job? It's not like I'm a public spokesman for the company, you know.

Yes, I would. If Waste Pro does not wish to be affiliated with someone who supports the confederacy, they are well within their right. After all, employees' political stances directly affect the amount of buisness recieved
 
Freedom of association? I'm not interested in associating with my employer outside of work or having it tell me what I may or may not say in a private setting. I perform a service for it, and it pays me. That's it. Now, if I were employed as a stripper or pole dancer then I could see how my private views on the subject would, by necessity, need to dovetail with my employer's.

The freedom of association right that we're talking about here is not your right, but your employer's. Your actions while not at work may impact your employer. When your actions do in fact impact your employer, then your employer has the right to determine if they want to continue to associate with you or not.
 
No the first amendment applies only to federal government. If state constitutions have incorporated similar government restrictions then that is a different matter and a positive thing. These concepts restrict government, not the private sector. Yes, companies can and should be able to terminate employees that do not meet the company's employment standards.



Yes, all speech, including free speech, carries consequences with it.

Read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_Rights "... Under the incorporation doctrine, most provisions of the Bill of Rights now also apply to the state and local governments. ..."

Amendment I

Guarantee against establishment of religion
This provision has been incorporated against the states. See Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947).

Guarantee of free exercise of religion
This provision has been incorporated against the states. See Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296 (1940).

Guarantee of freedom of speech
This provision has been incorporated against the states. See Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925)(dicta).

Guarantee of freedom of the press
This provision has been incorporated against the states. See Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931).

Guarantee of freedom of assembly
This provision has been incorporated against the states. See DeJonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353 (1937).

Guarantee of the right to petition for redress of grievances
This provision has been incorporated against the states. See Edwards v. South Carolina, 372 U.S. 229 (1963).

Guarantee of freedom of expressive association
This right, though not in the words of the first amendment, was first mentioned in the case NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449 (1958) and was at that time applied to the states. See also Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609 (1984), where the U.S. Supreme Court held that "implicit in the right to engage in activities protected by the First Amendment" is "a corresponding right to associate with others in pursuit of a wide variety of political, social, economic, educational, religious, and cultural ends."
 
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The freedom of association right that we're talking about here is not your right, but your employer's. Your actions while not at work may impact your employer. When your actions do in fact impact your employer, then your employer has the right to determine if they want to continue to associate with you or not.

When you use a word like "when," you're making a conditional statement. So, yeah, I can see circumstances where a company can reasonably terminate an employee for statements that could reasonably be seen to impact the employer's reputation or business. But in circumstances where that isn't the case, employers should butt out of employees' private (non-employment related) business.
 
I am aware that the suppression of speech by private parties does not constitute censorship. Then there is the irony of:

* Does not (*necessarily) constitute unreasonable/unacceptable censorship.

Censorship is defined by the ACT, not WHO does it. :roll:

For example, a forum censoring swear words - even if it is not by the government, the word is still by definition censored, as it cannot be seen.

Whether or not it is appropriate or reasonable is another discussion, but IMO, the idea that the ACT of censorship (versus whether it is acceptable or not) is defined by who does it - and not the actions involved - is just silly.
 
When you use a word like "when," you're making a conditional statement. So, yeah, I can see circumstances where a company can reasonably terminate an employee for statements that could reasonably be seen to impact the employer's reputation or business. But in circumstances where that isn't the case, employers should butt out of employees' private (non-employment related) business.

I agree with that.


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Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. Would you say, for example, that if I'm a trash collector for Waste Pro and I decide to use a Confederate battle flag as my Facebook avatar, Waste Pro has the right to fire me? Confederate flags are, after all, clearly offensive to a large body of the populace. How does my act reflect on my employer or hamper my ability to do my job? It's not like I'm a public spokesman for the company, you know.
In an at-will state, a boss can fire you because he doesn't like your lunch, or she doesn't like the color of your shoes.

Seriously.

There are some restrictions, of course. E.g. the employer can't fire someone for the color of their skin, their gender, their religion (unless religious practices become incompatible with the work, and a reasonable accommodation cannot be negotiated) and in some states sexual orientation. Also, some states protect employees who advocate for a candidate.

And like it or not, people do treat employees as representatives of a company, even after hours.

So yes, 99 times out of 100, you can be fired based on a mere whim. That can include firing an employee who publicly associates with the Confederate battle flag.
 
I understand the argument but I also understand that I have no unalienable right to a job--nobody OWES me a job--and vice versa nobody has a right to have me hire him/her or provide him/her a job in perpetuity.
Very true, but you might have legal limits on your ability to fire people. For example, you cant fire somebody because the are say, black, or because they are Buddhist. In short, and to paraphrase Turtle Dude's wording from a seperate issue:

"You as an employer can fire somebody for a good reason, or fire somebody for a bad reason, or for no stated reason. But, you can't fire somebody for an illegal reason (race, gender etc)."

* I believe this is dependent on the size of the company and whether the owner works there or not. Some small businesses maybe exempt.
 
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Very true, but you might have legal limits on your ability to fire people. For example, you cant fire somebody because the are say, black, or because they are Buddhist. In short, and to paraphrase Turtle Dude's wording from a seperate issue:

"You as an employer can fire somebody for a good reason, or fire somebody for a bad reason, or for no stated reason. But, you can't fire somebody for an illegal reason (race, gender etc)."

* I believe this is dependent on the size of the company and whether the owner works there or not. Some small businesses maybe exempt.

No. Even Mom & Pop operations are not exempt from discrimination laws except for EO quota kinds of things, but they probably aren't going to hire somebody they disapprove of on ANY grounds in the first place so you rarely if ever hear of discrimination cases with small businesses.

Disclaimer: mandatory quotas are supposed to be illegal these days, but certain regulation during the Obama Administration reinstated, of a sort, mandatory diversity in the work place.
Examiner Editorial: Feds push hiring quotas for women and minorities | Washington Examiner

But when arguing these kinds of things, I am generally arguing principle and my perceptions of cause and effect and not the law itself. In my view of how it should be, an immoral or unjust or unwise law is not an argument for how things should be; it is only a component of how things are.
 
No. Even Mom & Pop operations are not exempt from discrimination laws except for EO quota kinds of things, but they probably aren't going to hire somebody they disapprove of on ANY grounds in the first place so you rarely if ever hear of discrimination cases with small businesses.

I can imagine that most such owners just state that they turned down the individual for another reason. But, you might not be correct about the exemption.

I believe there was a Court decision involving an Amish man who owned a carpentry business and who refused to women and who would also not hire non Amish men. If I remember correctly, the decision noted the size of the business and that the owner worked on site, then allowed an exemption.

Likewise, I think there was another earlier case involving an Ultra Orthodox Jewish small business owner with near the same policies (would hire women in theory, but only for what he determined was a gender appropriate position- and the woman then had to comply with all Orthodox rules regarding inter gender contact while at work. This then negated her ability to do the job, so she was fired). The earlier court also cited the size of the business and that it was "owner occupied".

What I do know is that small, owner occupied boarding homes are exempt the anti discriminatory provisions of the Fair Housing Act: https://fairhousing.foxrothschild.c...mrs-murphy-exemption-to-the-fair-housing-act/ .
Likewise, some small scale rental property owners are also exempt from the anti discrimination provisions of the FHA:
https://fairhousing.foxrothschild.c...-fair-housing-act-not-many-but-here-are-some/

So, it could be possible that some small business owners are exempt the anti discrimination laws. I just don't know the specific cases or details.
 
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That might be the case- and I can imagine that most such owners just state that they turned down the individual for another reason.

At the same time, I believe there was a Court decision involving an Amish man who owned a carpentry business and who refused to women and who would also not hire non Amish men. If I remember correctly, the decision noted the size of the business and that the owner worked on site.

Likewise, I think there was another earlier case involving an Ultra Orthodox Jewish small business owner with near the same policies (would hire women in theory, but only for what he determined was a gender appropriate position- and the woman then had to comply with all Orthodox rules regarding inter gender contact while at work. This then negated her ability to do the job, so she was fired). The earlier court also cited the size of the business and that it was "owner occupied".

What I do know is that small, owner occupied boarding homes are exempt the anti discriminatory provisions of the Fair Housing Act: https://fairhousing.foxrothschild.c...mrs-murphy-exemption-to-the-fair-housing-act/ .
Likewise, so are some small scale rental property owners are also exempt from the anti discrimination provisions:
https://fairhousing.foxrothschild.c...-fair-housing-act-not-many-but-here-are-some/

So, it could be possible that some small business owners are exempt the anti discrimination laws. I just don't know the specific cases.

The anti-discrimination legal opportunists who salivate over a chance to sue somebody probably don't worry too much about businesses that are unlikely to have deep pockets too. They are more interested in the big boys who can pay million dollar settlements, etc. So even if discrimination laws do apply to small businesses, we probably rarely if ever hear of such cases.

In my libertarian (little 'L') soul, however, I think a person who is taking all the risks to start up and/or run a business should be able to hire a work force that is compatible, efficient, effective, and profitable for him. There are employees--I have worked with some--who don't commit any infractions or do anything that would normally be justification for firing them but who introduce such a toxic element or other dynamic into the work force that it is detrimental to all. I would like for an employer to be able to fire such people without worrying about whether the ACLU or some opportunistic lawyer is going to come calling demanding restitution for a wronged employee who happened to be female or black or whatever.
 
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