A recent Wall Street Journal article got me wondering whether employers should be allowed to fire employees for perfectly legal social networking “offences”—spontaneous outbursts, statements indicating frustration, or even the occasional picture taken grossly out of context. Apparently I’m not the only one wondering—employees, fired for such, or sometimes worse, social networking offences have lined up, filling judge’s dockets with employment suits begging this very question. Queuing up, these fallen employees have two fundamental questions on their mind: Is it right? And, more importantly, is it legal?
We seem to be headed into a new legal grey area as employers use offhanded remarks made on sites like Facebook as grounds to fire employees. Of course, prosecutorial judgment dictates that employees who violate the law via a social networking platform, by, for example, disclosing proprietary information or even state secrets, should not only be fired but brought to justice. However, the legal questions surrounding an employer’s decision to terminate based an employee’s offhanded comments—breaking neither federal law nor company policy—are not easily answered. What is clear, as Jeanette Borzo of The Wall Street Journal points out, is that this lack of legal clarity won’t last long. In a recent article Borzo outlines a number of stories where employees were fired for criticizing companies on Myspace or Facebook (though, separate legal questions are also addressed in these cases), or one situation in which a Georgian teacher’s contract was terminated because of a picture connected to her Facebook account which depicted her enjoying a glass of wine while traveling in Italy. Whatever the case may be and whatever your feelings about employers keeping tabs on their employees’ online activities, it is important that you consult your company’s social media policy (if such exists). Even if such snooping may be an affront to your moral sensibilities, until the legal questions surrounding such are sorted out, it may not be worthwhile to take the gamble, and violate corporate policy with a Facebook status update.
To keep tabs on this legal debate as it evolves, visit The Wall Street Journal’s What They Know site.
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