Workplace Censorship

J.P. Messina (Purdue University) will be giving a talk on workplace censorship. Here is the abstract:

The United States legal context allows employers to fire or sanction their employees whether they have good reason, bad reason, or no reason at all. They may, (unless prohibited by state or local statute) dismiss employees regardless of whether the grounds for dismissal are relevant or irrelevant to the person's job performance. They may discipline employees regardless of whether the behavior for which the employee is dismissed is constitutionally protected. Among other things, this legal environment protects employers’ rights to fire employees for exercising freedoms guaranteed them under the First Amendment. This can leave employees dominated precisely where it most matters that they are free: in the exercise of their political liberties. And this concerns us all: If employer censorship becomes widespread, discourse can suffer as people withhold their controversial views from the public sphere. All of these are sensible concerns. I argue in this talk, however, that it would be shortsighted to pursue a legal remedy for them—particularly one that extends statutory protection for employee speech rights against their employers. This is because we have good reason to recognize that employers--at least of certain kinds--have strong rights to the freedom of association. Additionally, firms sometimes have expressive liberties of their own. Legal remedies of the sort found in roughly half of states violate these freedoms. But they are also not guaranteed to improve our environment for discourse. Indeed, they may make it worse. Despite my skepticism of legal remedies, however, I argue that employers have strong reasons, both instrumental and moral, to avoid playing the censor. When they fail and act contrary to these reasons, the public must hold them accountable. A lot hangs in the balance.

Center for Applied Ethics | Website | View More Events
Co-hosted with: Menard Center for the Study of Institutions & Innovations, Philosophy Club

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