Man allegedly fired for being fascist. Can you be fired for political beliefs?
A self-described Catholic fascist said he is out of a job after his employer saw his controversial comments on an episode of “Surrounded” by Jubilee. The man named Connor sympathized with the Nazis and said he prefers autocracy to democracy.
Connor has since started a fundraiser that he says will be an emergency fund while he’s between jobs. In the post, he blamed cancel culture for his firing.
“Unfortunately voicing fully legal traditional right wing political views results in real consequences,” he wrote.
Some of his more controversial statements in the video include saying that he’s a fascist, that he wants an autocracy run by anyone who is in line with Catholic teaching and that he doesn’t care about being called a Nazi.
He claimed his views are traditional right wing. Judge for yourself.
Straight Arrow News has a contract with Jubilee to fact-check statements made by debaters in select episodes of “Surrounded.”
Straight Arrow News interviewed Nicholas Woodfield, principal and general counsel at the Employment Law Group.
Woodfield made a few main points:
- Connor would have a hard time saying he was fired for an improper cause.
- His talk about fascism and the Nazis arguably started falling into the area of hate speech, which Woodfield described as a murky topic.
- You can’t be fired for your political beliefs, but you can be fired by a private employer for talking about certain actions you want to take related to politics, disrupting the workplace because of your politics or making your employer look bad.
Here is a transcript of the interview. It has been edited for clarity.
Ray Bogan: So what do you make of Connor’s case and the fact that he says he got fired for those statements?
Nicholas Woodfield: I think he got himself into a situation where he would have a hard time saying that he was fired for an improper purpose.
Not only did he say that he believed that he was a fascist, but he also started citing political commentators that were cited by the Nazi party and that supported the Nazi party and said things that would align with Nazi beliefs. And that gets to the point where arguably you may be falling into the area of hate speech.
Even if it was protected potentially under the First Amendment, you fall outside of the protections. But a lot of places will say once speech becomes disruptive, it’s a basis for terminating you. So like if you’re a baker and you work in a bakery and you’re in the front, you can’t be fired because you voted for the Democrat or the Republican in the office. If, however, you start saying things like, ‘I am in favor of the National Socialist Party and I believe that there should be a general purging of people that are socially unacceptable in the society,’ you can probably fall out.
Bogan: Let’s say for the purposes of this conversation, his employer knew he had all the views that he expressed in the Jubilee video before they hired him and they knew it all along. The only thing that changed after the Jubilee video is that he said it in a public manner. Does that change anything?
Woodfield: It doesn’t matter. Once he publicized that and someone looked him up and found him and they say he works for Bob’s Groceries, they may look at Bob’s Groceries in a different way as a result of it. If the employer felt that what Connor said in that video reflected poorly on it potentially or impacted its ability to serve its customers or its public reputation, then typically it would be justified. There’s a difference between associating with a party and advocating a position.
Bogan: Can you be fired for your political beliefs?
Woodfield: So the answer is nuanced. Federal government, state governments, local institution governments, there’s a slightly different standard. And in terms of your beliefs, if you’re working for a private employer, it turns more along sort of what you’re doing to manifest those beliefs. If you’re in a private institution, if you’re working for a private employer, you cannot be terminated based on who you’re politically affiliated with, like in terms of what your political party might be or who you vote for.
It can get you fired if you’re walking around with placards and advertising your positions because it can be disruptive. There’s a time and a place for everything and you can’t necessarily subvert everything you’re doing and say, ‘I’m lobbying for someone or I’m campaigning for someone at work’. Because that can be disruptive to the actual job.
You also run into what’s called hate speech. And hate speech is a slightly murky topic, but it’s essentially when you start switching from socially acceptable speech to less socially acceptable speech governed by the norms of most of the populace.
Bogan: I would imagine it depends on your job description too. For instance, I’m a journalist. I’m not supposed to express any political opinions. And if I went on a political rant on social media, I would probably be fired for that, and rightfully so. So it not only depends on the view, but probably your position and what the expectations of your job are. Is that reasonable or correct?
Woodfield: I think that’s sort of a broadly correct summary. And I can’t speak to your employer or your situation, but I think you compromise your ability as a journalist. If you’re holding yourself out as an advocate for one position, you don’t necessarily look like you’re a disinterested observer. You seem to be aligning with someone.
And for your employer, that may make it very difficult to hold itself out as an objective, disinterested news purveyor. It can hurt that employer’s brand.
Bogan: So then maybe Straight Arrow News could say, well, we’re not firing you for a First Amendment violation, we’re firing you because you hurt our brand. And so it seems like that would be the place where you cross that line you discussed earlier, where it’s no longer about the First Amendment, it’s now about the brand.
Woodfield: Yes, but remember the First Amendment is in the Constitution and it applies to the government. And that’s the state and federal government. Private institutions are not the government.
You can’t go into work and say you work at Bob’s Groceries and say, my First Amendment right does this, because the First Amendment doesn’t apply to private employers like Bob’s Groceries. So, in terms of what protections you do have as an employee and what you can and cannot say, you’re a lot more or you have a lot fewer protections working for a private employer.
Bogan: I’ve seen employment contracts, and certain states and companies are at-will employers. These employment contracts can say you can resign or be fired for any reason or no reason. How does that factor in?
Woodfield: Let me start off by saying it doesn’t. The bottom line up front is, yeah, you’ll hear people say, “I work in Washington state, and that’s a right-to-work state.” Well, everyone works there.
The U.S. is different than in Europe where most people have employment contracts and you can’t fire people except for certain justifications. And if you’re in the federal government, once you get past a probationary period, you can’t be fired for arbitrary reasons. But in most employment situations throughout the United States, you can quit your job without giving 30 seconds notice and there’s no consequences. Likewise, you can fire people for good reasons, bad reasons, made up reasons, pretend reasons, just not for illegal reasons. And so that you put it on a piece of paper saying that you can quit or I can fire you is just memorializing the status quo of the law.
The simple thing is pretty much everything is legal unless the law has made it illegal. And so the question is, is it illegal to terminate someone for a particular reason? And if it hasn’t been made illegal, it’s legal.
Bogan: Thank you very much for joining us. I appreciate it.
Woodfield: You’re very welcome.
Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
