Posted on 04/21/2021 7:49:28 AM PDT by mikelets456
A high-ranking police officer from Norfolk, Virginia, was fired after donating to a defense fund for Kyle Rittenhouse and telling the teenager—who has been charged with killing two people during unrest in Wisconsin last summer—that he did “nothing wrong,” a city official announced Tuesday.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Lawsuit time...................
I think he used his work email.
That might be the basis for firing him.
Yep, unlawful termination to be sure.
The rapidly accelerating descent of our justice system is mind boggling.
Dear Lord, have mercy.
“I think he used his work email.”
If that is accurate, and he mentioned his rank and department, he will have little recourse.
I think he used his work email.
That’s kind of a thin pretext these days. Normally when I’m at work I use webmail for personal stuff rather than the company mail server. But I have had lapses over the past 10 years. Looks to me that some liberal township supervisor wanted to ‘shoot a hostage’ to make a political point.
He only shot those who attacked him.
Considering the number of openings for qualified law enforcement officers in sane jurisdictions, in the end, this officer will likely find being forced to leave a leftists-run police force is a blessing in disguise.
I hope the I hope the officer takes the department to court and during discovery they look at the emails his superiors sent out to see if they’ve made the same mistake.
Norfolk PD must not have followed the Bhattacharya v. Murray case. This type of free speech censure has been determined to violate the 1st amendment. Norfolk PD is a government agency. Not only that, whoever fired him is also individually liable as is explained in the ruling in this case.
There is probably no basis for a lawsuit here. In Virginia, employees generally have very few rights. This has been litigated all the way to the Virginia Supreme Court.
Absent a contract or one of the specially protected special classes (political views are not protected) An employer can fire anyone for any reason or no reason at all.
There is no collective bargaining for public safety employees in Virginia either, so Police Unions are virtually toothless.
Garcetti v. Ceballos would control a public safety employee, not Bhattacharya (which involved a student).
The law is not a savior here, as you will soon see.
The law has actually be co-opted and is now wielded as a sword rather than as a shield.
Absent rules established in either a collective bargaining or employment agreement, employers are surprisingly free to discriminate based on political opinions. There are only a handful of states that have any kind of statutory protection in these circumstances. I know California is one. But, I’m not sure about VA...I doubt it, though.
There were two reasonably recent cases, both from roughly the time of the homosexual marriage controversy, that two state employees - one a fire chief in Atlanta and another a college administrator at the University of Toledo - were fired for offering political opinions in public. The Chief wrote a Cristian-themed book that was critical of homosexual behavior and (IIRC) the college administrator wrote an op-ed in her local paper defending the sanctity of marriage. Both were fired. Both happened to be black and both sued...and lost.
I know, it sounds crazy but that’s how it works.
I smell a big lawsuit coming.
Like every state other than Montana (I believe but am not certain), VA is an employment-at-will state. As such, wrongful termination is very narrowly defined. You generally can’t be fired on the basis of pregnancy, race, sex, disability (job dependent, though), religion, ethnic origin and (now) sexual preference. You cannot be fired for ‘blowing the whistle’ to local, state or fed regulators (like the EEOC or EPA) nor be fired for involvement in labor organizing, both of which are considered ‘retaliation’ and are expressly prohibited by federal law.
Other than that, employees don’t enjoy many other - if any - protections. For whatever reasons(s), Wrongful termination is one of the least understood concepts by people.
But he had every reason to believe it was anonymous. The web site was hacked, correct?
Anything can be Hacked, or Social Engineered. *
*there may be an exception, but I have not seen it yet
This is where the country is now. There is no diversity of opinion. Follow the official party line or you are fired, blackballed, canceled, shadow banned, banned, or killed.
In the soviet union you were went to the gulag, where you worked and then died. There are no gulags in the USA, but the end result is the same.
Freeeee marketttttt
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