|
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was put into place precisely because people in a discriminated group would speak out, only to be told that their manner of speaking out was not "acceptable." "Speaking out" under Title VII includes picketing, writing letters to customers about the discrimination, and engaging in work slow-downs. These are not acceptable actions to some, but they are legally protected actions and a company cannot fire an employee who carried out one of these actions. Since what she wrote specifically refers to sexual harassment ("Sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964". "[It] constitutes sexual harassment when submission to or rejection of this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual's employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual's work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment", "The harasser can be ... a non-employee." - EEOC's "Facts about Sexual Harassment"), it's almost certainly a protected action under Title VII. If so, then while it may not be acceptable to you and various others, it's illegal for her company to fire her because of that action. Assuming I understand the law correctly. To show I'm not just making this up, I'll quote from the judgement in Sumner v. United States Postal Service, 899 F.2d 203 (2d Cir. 1990): In addition to protecting the filing of formal charges of discrimination, Sec. 704(a)'s opposition clause protects as well informal protests of discriminatory employment practices, including making complaints to management, writing critical letters to customers, protesting against discrimination by industry or by society in general, and expressing support of co-workers who have filed formal charges. See Grant v. Hazelett Strip-Casting Corp., 880 F.2d 1564, 1569 (2d Cir.1989), and Schlei & Grossman, Employment Discrimination Law, 548-49 (1983)." See the part about "protesting against discrimination by industry"? Doesn't that describe this situation almost exactly? Now, if she broke a law, or violated some employee policy in a way that has nothing to do with Title VII nor is some other illegal practice (eg, it's illegal to suddenly fire her for doing personal blogging during company time if her supervisors had long known about that practice and had never given a caution or warning that it was a fireable offense) then that's a different issue. But no one has suggested anything of this sort. So, while you might be offended by what she did, that doesn't mean she "should have expected what she got" if that includes that she got fired from her job. |