Saturday, January 14, 2006

Gold Kist? James Madison would like a word with you.

It’s come to our attention recently that at least a handful of our local lawyers here in Athens read AthPo, and we’d like to send a shoutout to them.  Please, ladies and gentlemen of the bar, for heaven’s sake, call the guy in this story, because it looks like he’s got something of a First Amendment case here.

If you’re too engrossed in AthPo to click the link, here’s the abridged version.  Guy works for Gold Kist.  Every year for the last four years, he’s celebrated Martin Luther King’s birthday by posting the full text of the “I Have a Dream” speech in the employee breakroom.  Everything’s cool, until this year, when Gold Kist informs him he’s got to take it down.

I don’t know from law, but my co-editor does, and I’m sure he’ll have a thing or two to say about this when he gets back into town.  I do, however, have it on good authority from the prettiest third-year law student I know that this at least appears to meet the requirements for protected political speech.

Now, we’ll leave it to the real lawyers to weigh in, but this seems pretty cut and dried to me.  Political speech is protected, there’s no credible argument to made for incitement, and the fact that the company allowed him to do it in previous years goes a long way, in my opinion, towards negating any argument along the lines of the workplace not being a public forum.

4 comments:

Fishplate said...

Sure, the Constitution gives him the right to say whatever he wants...but it does not give him the right to have his employer subsidize/authorize/legitimize his opinion. Political speech is not protected on private property, same as you not being allowed a column in the ABH just because you have an opinion.

Though it does seem short-sighted of Gold Kist to require removal of the poster, and will certainly result in bad press for them, they do not have to allow anything on company property they don't like.

Suppose they allow that poster, and the next guy likes to put up posters of nekkid wonen? Or nekkid men, or goats, or whatever? They can ban those, but then the first poster is cited as precedent. so they don't want that to start - only offical company documents on the bulletin board.

Of course, he has the right to work for whomever he likes. As does every other person at Gold Kist who thiks it's unfair.

Cufflink Carl said...

Well, not exactly. I agree with you that it's a bad PR move, though. The argument you're making is a valid one for Gold Kist, at elast valid enough to merit seeing the inside of a courtroom.
I'm not a lawyer, and I'm sure that wiser heads will correct me on the fine legal points, but here's my take.

"Political speech is not protected on private property"

True enough, and if the company had a policy of banning any type of non-company sanctioned posting of things, then the case would be right out in court. But, since the company did allow that poster up in the past, my understanding is that there's a case to be made that there's a precedent, and thus by allowing it in the past, the workplace does legally become a public forum, and the political speech is then protected. You're absolutely right though, that political speech is not protected except in public forums, and there's a lot of First Amendment law based around that very concept.

"Suppose they allow that poster, and the next guy likes to put up posters of nekkid wonen? Or nekkid men, or goats, or whatever? They can ban those"
Well, again, we're talking about political speech. So if the naked women or men or goats were put up as political speech, then yes, they would be protected. In fact, I'd argue that the very act of putting them up to protest the first poster is, in and of itself, political speech and thus protected. Political speech is held to a pretty high standard of scrutiny, as it should be.

Look, I'm no lawyer, and the fella who is will probably be weighing in on this thing soon, with case law and everything, but I'm willing to admit that this is my, non-law-school-trained take on the situation, and while a judge may well disagree with me, I think there's at least enough merit under the First Amendment to warrant taking a look at it, no?

Cufflink Carl said...

Well, I'll yield to the guy who actually has, you know, a law degree and all.

Adrian Pritchett said...

The spokesperson's statement about the policy implied a concern for controversy, and the manager said someone may find it offensive. This fear of controversy seems silly since King's message is about nonviolence and equality, and we actually have a federal holiday in his remembrance. I suppose that the Declaration of Independence might be "offensive" to someone, too.