Amanda DeMatteis: Hi, Josh.
Josh Goodbaum: Hi, Amanda. What are we going to talk about today?
DeMatteis: We’re talking about employment law in the news, Josh, something that we love to see. There was a recent New York Times article about an employee who was terminated after speaking out on social media about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. What can you tell us about this, and what could Connecticut employees learn from this situation?
Goodbaum: The New York Times reports that Ball State University, which is a public university in Indiana, paid a $225,000 settlement to a former employee named Suzanne Swierc. Ms. Swierc wrote on her private Facebook page after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, “If you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person, we can’t be friends.” Well, that statement somehow became public; it got the attention of the Attorney General of Indiana, who wanted to crack down on her and others who said incendiary things about Mr. Kirk after his murder; and she was fired from her job at Ball State.
She filed a lawsuit against the state of Indiana, and according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, her lawsuit was one of 13 lawsuits nationally on behalf of employees who were fired after they said things about Charlie Kirk in the wake of his murder. Now, many of those cases have settled in favor of the employees, and that’s because the actions of these employers are actually pretty hard to defend under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
So what can employees in Connecticut and around the country take away from this settlement?
Number one – Political speech by employees is often legally protected, especially when it’s made outside the workplace. Employees of public entities have a right under the First Amendment to speak as a citizen about matters of public concern, and Charlie Kirk, his advocacy, and his death were all matters of public concern. This employee in Indiana made a speech about Kirk that didn’t have to do with her job. She was speaking not as an employee, but as a citizen, so her speech was protected under the First Amendment.
Number 2 – The right not to be fired for your speech is a right that mostly affect public employees, because only public employees have rights under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. However, that’s not true in Connecticut, Amanda. In Connecticut, we have broader protections, because a state statute – Conn. Gen. Stat. 31-51Q – guarantees to all employees in Connecticut the right to speak about matters of public concern, whether they work for the government or they work for a private employer.
Number 3 – We don’t often hear reports about settlements of employment lawsuits. That’s because almost every employment lawsuit settlement includes a confidentiality clause that prohibits the employee from speaking about the settlement. But that’s typically not true when we’re talking about a public employee who has sued the government, because government expenses are a matter of public record. So, public employees and their settlements of wrongful termination lawsuits give us interesting information about negotiations in employment cases – information that, unless you’re an employment lawyer like we are, you probably don’t have a lot of information about.
DeMatteis: Thanks, Josh. Incredibly good information, and we see this sort of free speech retaliation a lot. Both of us have had cases that are similar to this one in Connecticut with Connecticut employees. So this is another really good example of something that ends up in the news that we can learn from. If you’re an employee who is speaking out and wants to have legal protection, what you say, who you say it to, and who your employer is are really critical facts that will make a big difference as to whether or not you have a case for wrongful termination.
Thank you so much, Josh, for the information. Thank you so much for watching. We’ll see you next time.