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Happy Thanksgiving and the Many Things for Which We Are ThankfulBefore everyone gets out of the office to their various homes and families to celebrate the holiday, we wanted to review the year and count our blessings. Not only are we thankful that our families and colleagues in our Houston and Tampa offices weathered the storms safely, we are also thankful for the following legal stuff:

1. The DOL is not about to change the wage and hour laws.

Does anyone else remember the panicked calls last Thanksgiving week when the Texas judge put the brakes on a regulation that was going to increase the salary basis test? We are all thankful that will not happen this year. Although we still don’t know what, if anything, will happen on that front we will keep you posted.

2. Finally a court has said the ADA is not about leave.

Despite the EEOC’s insistence otherwise, the Seventh Circuit stepped up to the plate and said extended leave is not a reasonable accommodation under the ADA. As we all know, you still need to consider if a limited amount of leave will get the employee back to work but we are thankful that we have some new case law on this front.

3. Harvey Weinstein doesn’t work for us.

This story has horrified many but given all employers a wake-up call. We are grateful for the opportunity to train more people and try to make America a better place to work.

4. The NLRB has a new direction.

Maybe the new Board won’t tell employees that it is okay to swear at your boss on Facebook or nitpick employer policies quite so much.

5. You’re not going to be the employer of someone else’s employees.

DOL has withdrawn its prior guidance on independent contractor and joint employer liability, and Alabama’s Rep. Byrne has introduced a bill to “Save Our Small Businesses.”

6. Legalized marijuana has made questions about drug policies so much more interesting.

Even though it isn’t legal in many states, the fact that employees can legally ingest marijuana many places (including Florida) and take their chances on the looming random drug screen has spiced up our lives. While the law will continue to develop in this area, we are grateful for the very interesting questions we have received.

7. People other than our mothers read this blog.

(Okay, some of our moms are reading and might boost the numbers a little bit.) Since 2016, we have published more than 130 articles and had more than 230,000 reads, according to aggregate reports from Lexology and JD Supra. We have received recognition in The Expert Institute’s Best Legal Blog 2017 competition, the ABA Journal’s Web 100 Ranking, and numerous quotations in other publications. We enjoy bringing you this information and love it when you tell us it is helpful or tweet it to someone else.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Labor & Employment Insights blog team!

Around the end of October, a photo of a government contractor employee flipping the bird to President Trump’s motorcade went viral after the woman made it her profile picture on Facebook. She was subsequently fired for a violation of her company’s social media policy. The company said that the image was “lewd” and “obscene.” The woman argued that she was not at work when the photo was taken and did not mention her employer in the post. No litigation or charges have been filed yet, but would they be successful?

Can an Employer Regulate Political Social Media Speech?

Flipping Out Over Flipping Off: What Are the Limits on Regulating Employee Political Speech?

What comes to most people’s mind when reading this type of scenario is the First Amendment guarantee of free speech. However, the First Amendment protects against governmental censorship of speech. With some restrictions, a private employer can restrict speech in the workplace. This right to restrict also may be extended to social media speech, especially when the employer has a written social media policy and if the employee is using employer-provided equipment (cell phone or computer) to engage in the speech. Coupled with the fact that many states are “at-will” employment states, it may be perfectly acceptable for an employer to terminate an employee who engages in speech that the employer finds offensive or non-productive.

One complication outside of the First Amendment is the National Labor Relations Board’s recent decisions that employees cannot be restricted from commenting on social media about their conditions of employment. The NLRB considers such comments to be “concerted protected activity” for which an employer may not retaliate. However, as seen here, there may be social media posts that have nothing to do with the conditions of the workplace, but that the employer doesn’t like. For those posts, discipline or termination may be an option.

This story is a good prompt for employers to review their social media policies and to talk about them with their employees. Remind employees that, although they may not expressly identify each post with the place they work, they still may be considered the face of the organization. Political discussions are not per se taboo—but the tone and language used may sometimes stray into offensive territory. As always, an open dialogue about employment policies usually results in happier employees and less difficult situations.

The NLRB/EEOC Landmine – When Does Offensive Speech Amount to Protected Activity?Employers need to be on the lookout for instances of offensive employee speech, which may put them between a rock and a hard place as they navigate potential claims under either anti-discrimination laws or federal labor laws.

You have probably heard that Google terminated an employee earlier this month for saying (among other things) that gender inequality in the technology field resulted from biological differences. After James Damore (now former employee) circulated a lengthy written critique on the company’s diversity efforts, Google ended his employment. Google’s CEO sent a company-wide email announcing that Google terminated Damore because his statements violated the company’s code of conduct by “advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”

Google’s response to the memo is not surprising. Over the last several years, the tech industry has faced increased scrutiny about gender inequality in the workforce. We have seen a handful of claims (both in and out of court) alleging sex discrimination and harassment in Silicon Valley. Ignoring for the moment the optics, workforce morale, and company culture potentially affected by Damore’s manifesto, the company acted to minimize its exposure under anti-discrimination laws. For example, if a female employee later sues Google for sex discrimination, Google can point to its hardline response as evidence that it is committed to the equal treatment of women in the workplace and does not tolerate attitudes to the contrary.

What Google may have failed to consider, however, are Damore’s potential claims under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which protects employees’ rights to act together to improve pay and working conditions.

The day he was terminated, Damore filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), apparently claiming that his manifesto was protected activity and the company was trying to silence him by threatening his employment. (The actual complaint is not yet publicly available, but Damore has spoken out about it, and the NLRB site describes the nature of the complaint as “coercive statements.”) The day after Damore filed his NLRB complaint, the Eighth Circuit agreed with another NLRB order reinstating an employee terminated for making racial slurs to a group of African-American workers. Because that employee made the slurs during a nonviolent company strike, the Eighth Circuit held that he was participating in protected collective activity. Damore will likely point to the new Eighth Circuit opinion to support his NLRB complaint.

Whether offensive speech constitutes harassment is very fact-specific, as is whether an employee’s conduct amounts to protected concerted activity under the NLRA. Employers should always address instances of unprofessional or offensive comments, but they also need to be on the lookout for potential NLRB claims if the employee’s remarks reach a larger group of people (whether in person, in writing, or via social media).