Mozilla lays off 70

He didn’t not support gay marriage, he actively gave money to oppose it. That’s a little different.

It doesn't matter - it's legal, protected political speech in donation form. There's nothing wrong with having differing opinions about things; you can disagree as much as you like and donate as much as you want to counter it.

You're right, it absolutely is. The corollary to this is that no one has to hire him/work with him; they're allowed to fire him for his legally-protected speech. I don't agree with how it was handled either, but we must protect their freedom to act as they choose as much as Mr. Eich's freedom to speak as he chooses.

Appeal to legality isn't proof of moral superiority. Racial segregation was also legal via Jim Crow laws, and people still hold the political opinion it should still be despite society changing and moving forward.

It is also not censorship nor is it illegal to terminate employment with someone based on their political actions.

> Appeal to legality isn't proof of moral superiority.

Then why was it so important for gay marriage to have legal blessing?

> It is also not censorship nor is it illegal to terminate employment with someone based on their political actions.

It is if it becomes the norm (and it has, and it has lead to a Chilling Effect, and the blowback is going to be tremendous).

You've been downvoted; I sympathize. While you stick to "speech", I think you miss two things, one about speech and the other from a different area of law:

1. Free speech is not just a U.S. 1st Amendment issue, and who cares what else goes wrong at subsidiary levels. From the Committee for the First Amendment (Humphrey Bogard had to disavow under HUAC pressure; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_for_the_First_Amendm...) on, depending on whose ox was being gored, both left and right have decried "chilling effects" of less than federal censorship effects on free speech. Cory Doctorow had a good piece on this recently:

https://locusmag.com/2020/01/cory-doctorow-inaction-is-a-for...

Cory covers the full space, including corporate censorship of dissidents of all political stripes, corporate capture via monopolies and market super-powers, etc. Recommended.

2. California has labor law from the New Deal era, which protects employees from being fired or demoted due to political affiliation, participation, or any action including speech:

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

So it's not just as simple as your downvoted post seems to say.

> It is also not censorship nor is it illegal to terminate employment with someone based on their political actions.

It is in California: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/...

Only in enacting company-wide policies to coerce political participation. Terminating employment for political actions in an at-will employment state like California is still legal.

From your article:

>On the contrary, political beliefs or views are not a specifically protected category under California's discrimination laws. Nothing in either of the two labor code provisions above directly addresses discrimination or retaliation on the basis of expressed political views. Nor does the First Amendment serve to provide any further guidance. With limited exceptions, the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of "freedom of speech" applies only to government action and not private employers/employees. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 prohibits political affiliation discrimination against federal employees only.

How is policy of terminating employees who donate to certain ballot propositions not amount to coercing political participation? It's directly coercing employees against donating with the threat of losing their jobs.

> Then why was it so important for gay marriage to have legal blessing?

Because it is currently illegal in many places?

>It is if it becomes the norm (and it has, and it has lead to a Chilling Effect, and the blowback is going to be tremendous).

Which is a slippery slope fallacy. Political views are not and have not ever been protected classes.

How do you know that it is Mozilla's company policy? That is the distinction based on the law that you cited. Firing someone for a reason in an at-will employment state does not suddenly make that reason part of the company policy.

Because they fired an employee specifically for their political donations. Your claim that firing employees for their political activity is ok as long as it's not a company policy and only one-off instances is not what law groups are saying. Here's one that addresses Eich's case specifically: https://shawlawgroup.com/2014/05/california-law-protects-emp...

> Mr. Eich’s situation is somewhat analogous to the one addressed in Nava v. Safeway, Inc., an unpublished decision of the California Court of Appeal. There, the court found that an employee had a viable wrongful termination claim because Safeway allegedly fired him for opposing gay marriage. Safeway claimed to have discharged Nava for taking down a sign he considered to be pro-gay. Nava claimed he was fired for his political beliefs.

> Eich therefore likely had the right to contribute to Proposition 8 as a protected political activity.

I'm not claiming anything, just explaining the law you cited.

Being fired for your political actions is entirely legal in at-will employment states like California.

The law you cited does not apply, except to companies that use company policy to _coerce_ political action from employees. Firing someone for their actions does not make it company policy.

Mozilla was not coercing employees to take political action by adding politics into their company policy. Mozilla was saying that for that particular position at their company, the employee's political actions were grounds to be terminated.

I'm not sure how many more ways I can explain this, but that's why what happened is legal, despite the lawyers opinion you googled.

Also from that article:

> Mozilla contends Eich voluntarily stepped down; if true, of course, there is no legal issue.

The article was using the Eich example to illustrate the case law it was discussing. It did not state that there was a legal issue in Eich's case, merely hinted that Mozilla's contention might be false and, if so, there was illegal behavior. But the primary purpose of its inclusion in the article was to elucidate the relevant issues, not to argue for or against what happened in that instance.

> > Appeal to legality isn't proof of moral superiority.

> Then why was it so important for gay marriage to have legal blessing?

Are you suggesting that the only reason to legalize something is to get a legal stamp on it being moral? The main reason is to stop discrimination.

I understand what you're saying, but the point is you're wrong. A company cannot go around firing any employees that donates or otherwise supports a candidate from a particular party, for example. The protections read:

> No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity. [1]

This not only prohibits employers from coercing employers to adopt a particular stance, it also prohibits employers from influencing employees to refrain from adoption or following any lines of politician action or activity.

How could firing an employee for political donations not be considered influencing an employee to refrain from a particular line of political action. Specifically, in Mozilla was influencing employees to refrain from the political action of donating in favor of Proposition 8.

> Mozilla was not coercing employees to take political action by adding politics into their company policy. Mozilla was saying that for that particular position at their company, the employee's political actions were grounds to be terminated.

Again, this is not just about specifically telling employees to support a particular cause in its company policy. Employers coercing employees to refrain from adopting or following political action is prohibited too. And in this case, it is pretty explicit what political action Mozilla was trying to make employees refrain from: donating to Proposition 8.

And again, people that study law say that firing Eich for his donations would have been illegal as I provided above.

1. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

Lawyers in California disagree: https://www.worklawyers.com/illegal-firings-california/

Here's an equally correct example invoking Godwin's law.

>Why yes I do donate lots to the ANP. >Why? Well they align with my love for Hitler, racial purity and fascism. >What do you mean the board things this'll make jewish employees uncomfortable? >A wider range of customers/employees won't like it either? >So what. It's legal, protected political speech in donation form!

Nobody gives a fuck. It's equally legal to not want to associate with such a person. Whether it's a racist or someone that wants to ban gay marriage, etc i wouldn't to work for them, with them or fund them. And guess what. I don't expect the Mormon church or whatever to put part of a gay couple or an advocate or donor for related stuff in an executive position either.

That's a lawyer's marketing blog selling his services to sue for wrongful termination. The labor code § 1101 they cite is the same thing: it applies only to employers using threatening to terminate in order to coerce political activity, not actually terminating someone for political actions.

This is an important distinction. It is illegal for an employer to threaten all employees with termination if they do not vote on X, for example. It is not illegal for an employer to terminate an employee for taking a specific political action.

Mozilla did not threaten to terminate in order to coerce action, they terminated for actions already taken place, making it legal.

Do you know the difference between threatening someone to coerce them into action, and actually doing it for said actions?

Both are prohibited, "...through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment". It's illegal to do influence employees through means of discharge or through threat of discharge. Firing someone for political activity and threatening to fire someone for political activity are both in violation of these employment protections.

> it applies only to employers using threatening to terminate in order to coerce political activity, not actually terminating someone for political actions.

So your idea is that it's not okay to threaten to fire an employee over political actions, but it is okay to actually fire someone over political actions? No worker protections protects against both. Read it closely:

> No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through _or_ by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.

It prohibits both discharge and threat of discharge. The argument that Mozilla did not threaten to discharge Eich, and thus discharging Eich because of his political activity is not relevant. Both are prohibited.

Respectfully, with full benefit of hindsight, do you think it would have been better if you had stayed at Mozilla, forcing them to either fire you (which would have been illegal) or learn to deal with dissent? I ask not to criticize but to strategize.

Thanks for standing up and fighting these good fights.

Oh, sure, until it ends up in the situation where you have to prove your perfect ideological allegiance to the Party in order to have employment. It's already the case that you can't publicly post things without getting dox'd and fired for a lot of opinions that were 100% the norm not that long ago. You may call it progress, but the progression is towards totalitarian liberalism; your gay marriage is really not going to make that experience that much better once they find some place where you're not faithful enough. For example, what if you're a white gay male?

I cannot comment on anything about what happened, sorry.

I didn't make the laws - this is what they are. GP is making the appeal to legality which is wrong in this case.

The law is to prevent employers from extorting all employees into taking political action under threat of termination. Terminating a single employee for their past political actions is different from extorting all employees into action.

> The law is to prevent employers from extorting all employees into taking political action under threat of termination.

Not incorrect, but an incomplete description of these worker protections. It is also prevents employers from threatening employees into refraining from taking political action, "No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity."

> Terminating a single employee for their past political actions is different from extorting all employees into action.

Terminating an employee for their political action makes it crystal clear to the remaining employees that they need to refrain from that political action if they want to keep their jobs - and that violates worker protections.

Again, you seem to be under the impression that these protections only exist to prevent employers from making their employees carry out a political action. That's not the case, they also prohibit influencing employees from refraining taking political action. Firing an employee from donating to a ballot initiative is a very explicit way to get employees to refrain from donating to said ballot initiative.

And yet again, I as well as other commenters have provided you with analysis from law groups that explain that Mozilla firing Eich over his political donations would have violated these worker protections.

This is becoming ad nauseum. You're missing the point about how the law applies differently to company policy and actions, but my guess is that you desperately want them to be the same hence your repeated arguments and confirmation bias. The lawyer blogs you and another commenter linked to are trying to sell services to sue employers and are not valid analyses.

You're cherry picking the statement by quoting it out of context, which shows the law only applies to one (coercion):

> No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.

You also dodged the question.

(I could not possibly comment, but students of constructive separation might possibly draw conclusions on their own.)

> This is becoming ad nauseum. You're missing the point about how the law applies differently to company policy and actions

Where are you getting this idea that this law only applies to company "policy". Reread the protections:

> No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through _or_ by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.

Where does it say that this is only prohibited by policy? It says "No employer shall..." not "No employer shall implement policy to...". The law does not apply differently to company "policy" versus "actions".

It applies not to one, but to four:

> No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees...

So it's not just coercion, it's prohibiting influence (as well as attempts at either). And it also describes the manner of influence that is prohibited:

> through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment.

It is prohibited to influence employees through discharge or loss of employment or through threat of discharge or loss of employment. Both threatening to fire someone and actually firing someone over political activity are prohibited.

And lastly it describes what the employer is prohibited from influencing their employers to or to refrain from doing:

> to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.

Using the above to get employees to follow a political action to to refrain from following a political action is prohibited.

> You also dodged the question.

Because the question is inane and you know it. My whole point was that both threatening to fire Eich and actually firing Eich for donations violated these protections, so this distinction is irrelevant. But I'll entertain you: threatening to discharge someone over political activity is when an employer threatens and employee to fire someone for taking or refusing to take a political action. Discharging someone over political activity is when they are actually fired.

And now it's my turn to give you an inane question of my own: When the law prohibits both threatening to discharge someone for political activity and actually discharging someone for political activity, is trying to justify firing someone for political actions by saying, "it's okay they actually discharged him for political activity, they didn't threaten to discharge him" an effective approach?

Thanks.