Right before the election, the CEO of a Kansas company sends out this email:
A week before the November 2008 election, Brandt sent a “Notice to All Employees” outlining “new policies” if Obama was elected. It concluded with: “If for any reason you are not happy with the new policies, you may want to rethink your vote on November 4th.” ...
Exhibit A in the lawsuit is the e-mailed memo, which said, in part: “The last few people who were hired should clean out their desks. Don’t feel bad though, because President Obama will give you free healthcare, free handouts, free oil for heating your home, free food stamps, and he’ll let you stay in your home for a long as you want even if you can’t pay your mortgage.”
A week after the election, salesman Elliot Snell was fired. He describes himself as "a vocal Obama supporter". Now he's suing.
Assuming for the moment that Snell was fired for voting for Obama, I agree it sucks but it's probably legal. I'm not a Kansas lawyer, but if this is accurate, Kansas is an at-will employment state. The general rule is, you can be fired for any reason or no reason, so long as it's not one of an enumerated list of bad reasons (such as racial or gender discrimination.) So long as Snell had no contract (and the employee handbook didn't imply one), then he's out of luck.
At will employees can be fired for any reason that does not violate public policy. A clever barrister might argue that selective termination for exercise of the franchise is violative of public policy.
Posted by: shpx.ohfu | October 17, 2009 at 09:23 PM