Employee uses racial slur in Facebook profile: Can you fire her?

February 2, 2009 by
Filed under: Employee computer use, Security and law, Special Report 

shocked-computer-users

Here’s another story about employees who need a reminder that their bosses can read the stupid things they post online:

A teacher at Thomasboro Elementary school in Charlotte, NC, faces a possible firing over raunchy and offensive posts she made to the social networking site Facebook.

In the section for hobbies and activities, the woman listed “drinking” and “teaching chitlins in the ghetto of Charlotte.” The school is located in a low-income neighborhood and attended largely by minority students.

The teacher also posted pictures of herself and other female faculty members in sexually suggestive poses.

The worst part: On the site, the woman identified her employer and chose to make her page viewable by the general public.

She’s been suspended with pay while the school district makes a final decision about her continued employment, the Charlotte Observer reports.

Several other employees in the district have been disciplined for similar offenses, including a teacher who used a racial slur in his profile and another who announced, “I’m feeling p—ed because I hate my students.”

Legal protections?

Can employers discipline or fire employees because of what they do online? Yes and no.

There are no applicable federal laws, but several states prohibit companies from disciplining employees based on legal activities outside of work.

However, companies still have the right to protect their reputations and prevent harassment. They’ve normally been in the clear when there’s a link between employees’ conduct and their job performance.

For example, a teacher in Connecticut was fired after uploading inappropriate content to a Myspace page he used to communicate with students. He sued to get his job back — but the court upheld the termination, ruling that the Web page raised serious doubts about his ability to do the job (Cite: Spanierman v. Hughes).

Another case involved a police officer who was fired after he sold videotapes of himself stripping out of a police uniform. His lawsuit reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the police department, deciding employees could be fired for actions that are “detrimental to the missions and functions of the employer” (Cite: City of San Diego v. Roe).

The key for managers who come across employees’ embarrassing or offensive online exploits: Focus on the effects the conduct may have on job performance and take action based on legitimate business needs.

What embarassing online content have your managers discovered? Has your company ever fired an employee because of it? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Comments

21 Comments on Employee uses racial slur in Facebook profile: Can you fire her?

  1. Brian on Tue, 3rd Feb 2009 9:02 am

    2. Based on City of San Diego vs Roe, I’d say what the Charlotte teacher wrote was “detrimental to the missions and functions of the employer”. That’s pretty horrific for an elementary school teacher to think, much less say.
    I’m a First Amendment guy, but how can the school trust her to do her job if she really felt that way?
    Regardless, those parent-teacher conferences are going to be awkward…………

  2. Ed on Tue, 3rd Feb 2009 2:42 pm

    3. I am upset that there are haters still out there.

  3. Guppy on Tue, 3rd Feb 2009 2:43 pm

    4. Yes those are bad words and mean too! Extending the Law into the personal lives of your employees seems like a terribly bad idea. If you are gun enthusist and you work for a hospital your job is endangered. Just about any objectionable material generated by an employee coudl effect their job.

    If a Law is created and enforced then employees would really have to vote for political candidates that favor their company’s practices because if it ever got out it would effect their job performance.

    If companies want to control their employees actions they need to pay for 168 hours a week instead of just 40.

  4. TL on Tue, 3rd Feb 2009 2:52 pm

    5. People are insane, it’s bad enough to have these thoughts, but to say them and then to have a team
    of people that condone this racist, biggoted behavior is ridiculous and unbelievable in the society we live in today.

    The worst I’ve seen from people at my company is profanity or comments about an individual supervisor. A few individuals have been dumb enough to post information about jobs their actively applying to, or updates on interviews completed.

    It makes you wonder how these people find their way to work in the morning and how or who was crazy enough to hire them.

  5. Lynn on Tue, 3rd Feb 2009 2:53 pm

    6. If they are stupid enough to post something to the internet like that – then they are too stupid to have a job, especially ones that mold our future generations.

  6. R. B. on Tue, 3rd Feb 2009 2:56 pm

    7. Personally, while I value and believe in freedom of speech, I also believe a teacher who talks that way about her students is crossing the discrimination line and that’s a line no one should cross. Ever. For any reason. If that’s how she feels about her students, she doesn’t need to be teaching those children. They are precious individuals and should never be judged or labeled in such a detrimental way because of the color of their skin. The only lesson they are going to learn from her is one of unfairness, prejudice and hate, which just perpetuates the problem. Sad. (And no, I’m not Black / African American. I’m a female Caucasian who believes that prejudice has no place in the work place…or, for that matter, in our world.)

  7. Ginny on Tue, 3rd Feb 2009 2:57 pm

    8. Haters? If this teacher were “real” and looking out for her own best interest she would make her facebook private or consider using a more professional networking site like Linked In. I do some recruiting in my position and I always look for people on social networking sites to see if they have anything questionable. I do not base my hiring on content that is on the web but it is something to consider.

  8. Deb on Tue, 3rd Feb 2009 2:57 pm

    9. Ed, you really need to get a life – you’re upset about the haters? Seriously? You need to stop worrying about what others think, or love, or hate – you’ll never be able to please everyone. We don’t live in a society that accepts everyone – never have, never will.

  9. Ed on Tue, 3rd Feb 2009 2:58 pm

    10. She should with-out a doubt be fired and never given the chance to teach again. There is no place for hate in this world.

  10. Ed on Tue, 3rd Feb 2009 3:07 pm

    11. Deb – that is becuase of attitudes like yours the “Oh well” attitude is the same as accepting it. I will never accept it for that is how it wqill always be.

    You do know that at one time women could not vote and nedarly everyone thought that is the way it has been, is now and will always be. Well guess what that changed. Change is the only constant.

    You must be the change that you wish to see.

    Do not accpt hate -

  11. Patricia on Tue, 3rd Feb 2009 3:31 pm

    12. Listing where she works and not making her page private means it is grounds for dismissal. You can have your personal life and personal opinions but if someone can do a search on company name and that pops up then yes it is grounds for termination.

    If she has other teachers from the same school as friends and they take offense to her comment then that also is grounds for termination even if she doesn’t explicitly mention what school she works at. Her discriminatory comments could be seen as creating a hostile work environment if her coworkers are offended.

    If her site is only viewable by friends and she doesn’t mention where she works and none of her friends can or would claim a hostile work environment, I think she is entitled to say what she wants.

    You have a right and a freedom to be a jerk as long as your rights don’t step on other people’s rights. She still takes a risk of someone seeing it and taking offense but she has the freedom of speech to say what she thinks. If her behavior isn’t offending co-workers and students making a hostile work environmetn or her comment isn’t being associated with her employer, I think she has a right to be a jerk. I don’t have to like it or agree but her right to free speech should not be violated either.

    Anyone can say something that someone else will find offensive. I could say I don’t like yellow flowers and someone is bound to be offended. The right to freedom of speech is far more important to me than censoring someone for saying something bad.

  12. CP on Tue, 3rd Feb 2009 3:41 pm

    13. As much as we find this type of stupidity offensive, it is not illegal. The school should focus solely on whether it alters he effectiveness in the classroom. Sounds like she may be a bit burned and it is possible she is not doing a terribly competent job teaching. It seems to me that she should not be let go just because of her apparent ignorance and lack of good judgement with her public postings. Stupid people and racists have the right to by that way and still have a job. Even a job in the schools. I suspect her comments will have consequences that negatively affect her performance but maybe not. It is every Americans right to be small minded and offensive without the fear of their employer getting to decide if their employees are “allowed” to think that way. If companies did have that power I suspect the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would not ever even gotten to a vote, much less passed. Would the 19th ammendment to the constitution have been passed if every woman who publicly supported it had a husband who lost his job? I would hope that an employer’s ability to pull your personal business into company business would be fairly limited and specific to the job and not just when someone is generally offensive.

  13. Ed on Tue, 3rd Feb 2009 3:53 pm

    14. She was not generally offensive – she was blatentely offensive concerning the children under her care and tutilidge. What parent in that school will want their children in her classroom? If that is her real attitude, what is the actual quality of the educational experience that the children are receiving?

    People do have freedom of speach but you are not free from the consequences of that speach – that is the reality of life. Sometimes people take the constitutional rights too far and completly out of context.

  14. Brian on Tue, 3rd Feb 2009 4:01 pm

    15. Both cases cited above (Spanierman vs Hughes, City of San Diego vs Roe), would give the school system grounds to fire her if they chose. Once you list an activity such as “teaching chitlins in the ghetto of Charlotte.”, serious doubts have already been raised about the ability to do your job, especially in a school that’s in a low income neighborhood with a majority of minorities.

    I agree about the right to be a jerk and distasteful, but if it affects the school’s “missions and functions”, there are consequences, like Ed said.

  15. BLS on Tue, 3rd Feb 2009 4:32 pm

    16. Not a very smart thing to do – but (just about) everyone deserves a second chance. Giving this person another opportunity could be really turn her life around. Isn’t that what we want out of misbehaving students.

  16. antsell on Tue, 3rd Feb 2009 6:11 pm

    17. How about if someone’s private behaviour is illegal, but on their own time, like being arrested and jailed for drunk driving. Of course then not able to show up, or call in to say he wouldn’t be at work; not showing and not calling in prior to showing is itself grounds for dismissal per our handbook; employees excuse for not calling in was that he couldn’t because he was in jail. Private activity but illegal, and with name published in paper in Police Notes. Person’s position w/company involved much public contact. Grounds for dismissal? Or will he sue us for wrongful termination?

  17. Kim Schleich on Wed, 4th Feb 2009 9:51 am

    18. CP – While people do have the right to generally say what they want, they absolutely don’t have a RIGHT to a particular job. They sure have a right to work, but say & do some things that are your right to say & do … & you’ll lose your job. Plain & Simple.

  18. J on Wed, 4th Feb 2009 11:42 am

    19. I’d have to say that it’s kind of both sides of the argument being right here. Firstly, you do have the legal right to think and say whatever you want about yourself and your employer, provided you are not doing it on the company property or the company time. If she wants to go to a bar and get completely drunk and yell out, “I hate teaching all those kids! And my school (insert name) sucks!” well, she’s perfectly, and legally, entitled to do so. You don’t have to agree with her attitude, her racism, or her views, and it’s not taking a *shrugging shoulders –whattaya gonna do?* attitude about it. It’s reaffirming a fundamental Constitutional principle of free speech.

    Where it gets sticky is not an external place she goes to (Facebook or Myspace or whatever) or even if she has a public profile. Perhaps there are terms in her contract that make it possible for the employer to fire her for external violations that don’t specifically involve interacting with students or parents, but I’d be surprised if the school board had much of a case. How ever that may be in this case, if she was visiting Facebook on her school computer or on a computer in her school building and if she was posting this on school time, time she’s contracted to be working, then they have a very solid case about abuse of privilege, personal attitudes interfering with work performance, etc.

    Again, she’s doing it on her personal Facebook profile. She’s not on the school’s Page, writing on its wall these comments. She’s not joined a school-sanctioned Facebook Group so the school’s grounds for dismissal strike me as precariously balanced. The other two cases cited demonstrate specific offenses to the employer because of usage issues. In the teacher’s case, he used his Myspace page to communicate with students, therefore his online conduct was an extension of his in-class conduct and should have been performed accordingly. In the police officer’s case, he used his uniform in the performance of non-work-related activities which are clear violations of his contract and the department’s codes and guidelines.

    For points of comparison, these aren’t really all that similar cases.

    And I haven’t even gotten into issues involving the teachers’ union.

  19. Amy on Thu, 5th Feb 2009 9:43 am

    20. In between HR positons, I was a substitute teacher in a low-income school district and I understand the frustrations that a teacher faces when dealing not just with the problems in our education system, but also with the social issues that go along with children born into broken homes and poverty. It takes a truly patient, creative and compassionate individual to be a teacher under these circumstances and I have all the repect in the world for those who possess the proper competencies and do it successfully. It is more of a mission/vocation for these professionals, not a job. Those who do not possess the drive or the skills should not be teachers. Unfortunately, due to lack of respect for the teaching profession (probably due to bad apples such as these) and the major challenges caused by our poor education system and lack of funding, most of the “best and brightest” of our next generation are not going into the education field, creating a shortage of competent and successful teachers. So this is what ends up in some classrooms.

    As for the racial slurs, in this day and age especially, there is no excuse! It is just disgusting! Obviously, they do not value their positions and should not have them.

  20. mike R on Tue, 10th Feb 2009 12:04 pm

    21. The hardest thing I ever do as an HR professional is to terminate employment. I suspect that is the same with most here. I am amazed how quick we are to judge in forums like this and call for termination for simple errors or lapses of judgment. I know that in your workplaces, you get ALL the facts before deciding to terminate and you also take a look at the likelyhood that the behavior can be corrected and the employee retained.

    This teacher made a stupid error. She probably had no idea of the consequences. I am sure that she won’t do it again. I am pretty sure that any other teacher she comes in contact will “be trained” by her as to the folly of her ways. So this would be a learning opportunity that can pay dividends rather than cost all the money to recruit, screen, select, orient, and train a new employee.

  21. Lynne on Tue, 10th Feb 2009 12:16 pm

    22. There are some instances where a “second chance” is granted. If someone posts a disagreeable or offensive comment. The thing everyone seems to be forgetting is she is spewing hatred and teaching the same children she obviously despises.

    If this were a teacher who had molested a child and bragged, there would be no question about what to do. However, this teacher is molesting children’s minds with her hatred and bigotry. I say in the world in which we live, we cannot tolerate one iota of this disease to enter the classroom and potentially infect and definitely affect our precious children!

    She should be terminated or placed in a role that does not involve her influencing the minds of children. I wonder if she could clean toilets for her teacher’s wage…. that’s where she belongs.