A wave of firings following the Charlie Kirk assassination is raising free speech concerns.
The firings include national figures such as MSNBC’s Matthew Dowd and, closer to home, a part-time instructor at Guilford Technical Community College.
Ivy Johnson is a staff attorney for the North Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU.
WFDD’s Paul Garber spoke to her about the First Amendment’s protections — and limits — in the workplace.
On First Amendment Protections:
“The First Amendment protects an individual's speech on matters of public concern. So if someone is posting on their personal social media, their thoughts and feelings about something that affects the public generally, or if it's political or related to politics, then that is considered protected speech under the First Amendment, and it would be unlawful for them, if they were a public employee, to face adverse employment action in retaliation or as a result of that speech.
There are some sort of very narrowly defined categories of speech that public school teachers are not really allowed to engage in, or that would not be considered protected under the First Amendment, but those are very narrow types of speech, such as hate speech, obscenity, along those lines. Otherwise, if a school teacher is posting their personal thoughts on a matter of public concern, that speech is protected.”
“The biggest distinction is between a private employee and a public one. So if you work for the county, for the city, for the state, you're a public employee, and you actually get more protections as a result, because an action taken against you by your employer is a government action, and the First Amendment says that the government cannot abridge speech. However, if you are working for a private company, and that company takes actions against you in North Carolina, we're a right-to-work state, which means that that company can kind of fire you for any reason. They don't have to show that you even did something wrong. They can just fire you. There are some protections, but those are limited and often depend on the type of workplace that you work at. You know, whether you might be unionized and that sort of thing.”
On the evolution of attitudes to the First Amendment in the age of social media:
“I think this age of the internet, the age of social media, has made speech much more accessible. A person can see that someone they know or they used to know might have an opinion that they strongly disagree with. It amplifies speech. But what I think people need to remember is the purpose of the First Amendment is to foster this type of discourse and this type of debate. And the founders thought that that was important to a representative democracy, so that everyone can have their voices heard. And again, it's really only very, very narrow types of speech that are not afforded the full protection of the First Amendment.”