I don’t often make predictions on legal outcomes, so when I do and I get it right, it’s worth sharing. In May, we talked about whether “liking” a candidate would constitute protected speech under the First Amendment. A district judge in Virginia ruled it was not. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals recently reversed in Bland v. Roberts.
In that case, a jailer in Virginia liked his boss’s opposition during a campaign for sheriff. The incumbent won and the plaintiff was fired. The sheriff said it was for competency issues, but the plaintiff said retaliation was the motivating factor for the termination.
I wrote back then that “it seems like a slam dunk case for our fired jailer,” before describing the district court’s dismissal based on the judge’s opinion that “liking” something on Facebook did not amount to a “substantive statement” worthy of protection. Both the lunacy of the idea of liking a candidate on Facebook not being considered “substantive” enough to warrant protection and the questions asked during the appeal according to this Bloomberg report, I wrote, “I would put my money on a reversal.”
Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner!
Reversing, the Fourth Circuit compared liking on Facebook to putting a campaign sign in your yard. “On the most basic level, clicking on the ‘like’ button literally causes to be published the statement that the User ‘likes’ something, which is itself a substantive statement.”
It is not likely your “like” will get you fired and set up a Supreme Court case. The lesson, however, is to be careful of making employment decisions based on what you see on Facebook. The issue is more problematic for public employers, but as we have discussed before even non-union private employers need to make sure their social media policies and employment decisions do not upset the NLRB. ”Liking” a complaint from a co-worker about working conditions cannot be the basis of a termination. In some states, it is illegal to fire someone for engaging in protected speech. ”Liking” Coke when you work at Pepsi in an at will state, like Texas, can still probably get you fired.
