We could try it for four years and find out!
Your location says “Pacific Northwest”, so for a moment, let’s assume it’s Seattle. In Seattle, it is unlawful for any:
Definitions:
So in Seattle, firing or discriminating against a person because they are a Trump supporter, which does not otherwise interfere with job performance, seems to violate this statute.
In Oregon, the prohibitions focus more on campaign contributions and petition signing, so less broad protections. My understanding is that CA has fairly broad protection, which came into play and offered protection where people were supporting gay marriage.
My irony meter is going off and I can’t figure out why. 
I think it would be nearly impossible to define “political opinions”, much less whether they would make one unable to do one’s job.
Should your employer be able to fire you for posting on social media that you think having sex with children should be legal, but only if you directly work with children?
Question on that then. When Colin Kaepernick was doing his kneeling for the Anthem thing, there were many who were calling for his firing for that. I can’t find the thread right now, but my involvement in it was specifically that I did not think that it would be legal to fire him for participating in a political activity.
I was chastised thoroughly, and told that political activity was not a protected class.
Does California’s broad protections actually cover that sort of activity?
It certainly does seem that way. If I was in Seattle, perhaps I’d be the test case. Then, if convicted, maybe I could get pardoned by the Governor.
An interesting jurisdictional question. I’m not within the Seattle City Limits, but I do have employees based in the city. I suppose I could order an employee to my office, not “within the city,” and fire them there.
Anyway, that law seems to be consistent with what the OP was requesting. Given that I’m pretty familiar with the Seattle Municipal Code (and a former pro tem judge in Seattle Municipal Court) and I had never heard of it, I wonder how effective it is. I’ll poke around and see if it’s been used much.
No. Employment is a voluntary exchange between two parties. It should be terminated whenever it is no longer preferred by either party.
In Kaepernick’s case, it’s mildly different since he was sort of “on the job” when he was kneeling during the pre-game rendition of the national anthem. In some states, as Bone noted, it might not be legal for firing an employee for collecting signatures for some political issue as long as they’re doing so on their own time. It sure as hell is perfectly legal to fire them if they’re using the time they’re supposed to be working for their political advocacy.
Short answer - I don’t know. The statute in question does not specify if the protections are for both on the job and off the job political activity and there have been court cases that indicate one and not the other, or both. There is also the complication of the NFL employment contract which I’m not privy to. And even then, there are generally exceptions to the statute if there are legitimate business interests that such activity would impact.
Okay, so some states do offer some sort of protection. I’m going to work to get such protections enacted in Florida. I was skeptical of a national law anyway for an issue like this.
Maybe I can round up supporters of Prof. Storey while the wounds are still fresh. He does seem to have been a popular professor if ratemyprofessor.com is any indication.
Just package an unpopular or non-PC point of view with an ornate robe, some rituals, and a holy symbol and bam! you have a religion. Now you have a protected class.
Yep. And I’d note that “at will employment” does not mean you can be fired for any reason. It means you can be fired for any reason except specifically prohibited reasons. I’d just like to get off duty speech added to those lists of reasons.
Interestingly, the article Bone linked to does state that my own county, Broward County, FL, does prohibit firing people for being a member of a political party. Pretty narrow, but it shows that the idea is workable.
I’m hoping for the day when fear of reprisals for social media activity causes everyone to abandon it altogether and en masse. Adding legal protections for those who bring shame and humiliations on their family names and employers would slow this, so I oppose it.
The problem comes in defining such things. Would your view change if women getting abortions were outed and ostracized?
This would require a seemingly impossible series of events: abortion is still legal, but all names of abortion procedures are made public, and societal and cultural views have shifted such that it’s legal but considered morally taboo. Which seems contradictory.
The only way I’d support such a thing is if, similarly to the history of employment discrimination by race or sexual orientation or similar categories, it can actually be demonstrated that these incidents are prominent and common enough to result in a significant difference in opportunity over the long-term.
If suddenly, a huge number of businesses fire people who praise conservative values on social media, then I’d strongly consider a legal remedy. But without that, then this would do far more harm than good.
I think it’s going to happen sooner than you t
While I would look very disfavorably upon an employer who fired their employee for having an abortion, I do not know that they would be breaking any laws by doing so.
The outing, however, is invading medical privacy, and that would be breaking a number of laws under HIPPA.
Having your private medical information stolen and used illegally is a bit different than someone taking a picture of you in public carrying a nazi flag.
Your analogy fails.
If the problem we have today is that businesses don’t actually want to fire employees for their off duty poiltical advocacy but sometimes feel forced to due to their employees’ comments going viral and pressure being put on them to fire the employee, the easiest way to fix that is to just make it illegal to fire employees for that reason. Then there’s no boycotts, just as there are no boycotts for businesses that hire black employees anymore. Once their hands were tied, they were able to do what most of them wanted to do in the first place but couldn’t due to the mob.
If I’m right and virtual lynch mobs are the only reason people are getting fired, then the law doesn’t even have to have teeth. The existence of it would be enough since businesses would already be inclined to let off duty activities have nothing to do with the employer.
The reason I think this is becoming an issue though, despite the current relative rarity, is that the behavior of trying to force employers to fire people for their views is starting to become normalized and could end up being a serious problem. I’d like to see the practice nipped in the bud before powerful advocacy groups start seeing it as just something in their toolbox that they can use to strike fear into their enemies. The first video I saw of the Berkeley protests showed a man saying, “I’m hear to see that you get to speak freely today, and lose your job on Monday.” I find that chilling. Although apparently California does already offer some protections in that regard, so that’s good.
Just to be clear for those who are against such protections, that would include voting? Businesses could fire employees who took unauthorized time off to vote?
I don’t think that’s the problem, at least for the most part. I think most employers really don’t want to employ people who spout off about white supremacism in public. If so, that’s not a problem. That sounds like a good thing for society, actually, just as it’s good that most employers don’t want to employ people who spout off about abusing children in public.
That “chilling” thing you’re complaining about is protected speech (saying to someone “I’m going to try and get you fired”) – isn’t white supremacist speech far, far more chilling? Neither should be illegal, and neither is illegal.
I’m in favor of a national holiday for election day. I’d also be fine with a requirement that businesses provide time off for voting. That seems like an entirely separate issue than getting fired for publicly ranting about the evil Jews in one’s off time.