[hsitz]

You do realize that the U.S. Constitution only prohibits the _government_ from infringing on right to free speech? The Mozilla Foundation is not a governmental entity, thus they can take whatever actions they want when employee says something they don't like. Also, while there are laws prohibiting private employment discrimination based on e.g., race, sex, religion, or other protected classes of people, there are (afaik) no laws against discriminating against people on the basis of political affiliation or gun-rights beliefs. Heck, in many states it's still legal to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_employment_discrimination...

[bzbarsky]

> there are (afaik) no laws against discriminating against people on the basis of political affiliation

There are in California, actually. See California labor code sections 1101-1102 http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab&gr... , which say:

1101: No employer shall make, adopt, or enforce any rule, regulation, or policy (a) Forbidding or preventing employees from engaging or participating in politics or from becoming candidates for public office. b) Controlling or directing, or tending to control or direct the political activities or affiliations of employees.

1102: 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.

etc. So in California (where Mozilla is headquartered and where Brendan lives) it is in fact illegal to fire someone for a political donation they make.

Now the actual punishment is a slap on the wrist in practice (see section 1103; it's a $5k maximum fine for the corporation if the employer is a corporation).

[hsitz]

Thanks for the example of California. I expect there may be more. However, the main thing I wanted to point out in my post was OP's confusion, shared by many, regarding what entities are prohibited from infringing on constitutional rights. Only government (or in some cases quasi-government) entities are prohibited from infringing constitutional rights. Private entities can in most cases do whatever they want, unless a statutory law (i.e., a non-constitutional law) has been enacted prohibiting their action.

Also, I don't know much about the CA law you quote, though I wonder whether it prohibits political discrimination in the _hiring_ of employees at all. Section 1102 definitely prohibits firing based on political activity. I don't see anything that says you can't discriminate on a political basis in _hiring_. Perhaps that is in a different section. I tend to think, e.g., that the Democratic Party organization would not be forced to consider hiring Republicans equally with Democrats, not sure how that's dealt with.