Employment Law Newsletter<\/p>\n
In , the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court recently upheld Jennifer O\u2019Brien\u2019s termination for conduct unbecoming a teacher by posting the following comments on Facebook: \u201cI\u2019m not a teacher \u2013 I\u2019m a warden for future criminals!\u201d and \u201cThey had a scared straight program in school \u2013 why couldn\u2019t [I] bring [first] graders?\u201d First, the court agreed with the finding below that O\u2019Brien was not commenting on a matter of public concern, namely student behavior in the classroom, in which case the comments may have been protected by the First Amendment. Rather, the court reasoned that O\u2019Brien was making personal statement driven by her dissatisfaction with her job and her students\u2019 conduct. Finally, the court observed that even if the comments were on a matter of public concern, O\u2019Brien\u2019s First Amendment rights to make such comments was outweighed by the school district\u2019s interest in the efficient operations of its schools.<\/p>\n
Although this decision has limited application outside of the public sector because First Amendment rights do not extend to private sector employment, it nonetheless serves as a heartening sign that under the right circumstances the courts will uphold the termination of an employee who makes damaging comments about the workplace on social media. While this decision did not involve a challenge of O\u2019Brien\u2019s communications as commentary about workplace conditions protected by Section 7 of the NLRA, it would be interesting to see how far the NLRB would push the boundaries of protected activity under these circumstances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Employment Law Newsletter In , the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court recently upheld Jennifer O\u2019Brien\u2019s termination for conduct unbecoming a teacher by posting the following comments on Facebook: \u201cI\u2019m not a teacher \u2013 I\u2019m a warden for future criminals!\u201d and \u201cThey had a scared straight program in school \u2013 why couldn\u2019t [I] […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,247],"tags":[],"coauthors":[139],"class_list":["post-562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-insights","category-labor-employment-insights"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n