Thursday, October 29, 2009

... people who think they're being discriminated against when they're not?

Trevor Keezer, a cashier from Home Depot, was fired from a Home Depot in Florida for refusing to remove an item of clothing that violated the company dress code.


It seems pretty straightforward. Not particularly newsworthy, at any rate. Home Depot has a policy for its employees; an employee violated the policy; he suffered the expected consequence.


The reason we're hearing about this is that the item of clothing in question was a button saying "One nation under God, indivisible." Now Keezer's attorney, Kara Skorupa, is planning to sue Home Depot over religious discrimination.


What Keezer and Skorupa seem to be overlooking is the fact that company policy would have prohibited Keezer from wearing any button that wasn't provided by the company, regardless of the message.


Nor did the execution of the consequence come without fair warning.


According to Keezer, "... I was told it had to come off, or I would be sent home. So they sent me home for six straight days without pay. And then today they terminated me."


In case you missed the little gap in his story: given the option of taking off the button or being suspended, Keezer chose to keep his button on. Why did he refuse, you might ask?


"It never crossed my mind to take off the button because I'm standing for something that's bigger than I am. They kept telling me the severity of what you're doing and I just let God be in control and went with His plan," Keezer said.


It never crossed his mind to take the button off -- not even when he was told that it was a severe violation of company policy? Who wouldn't fire him?


If it was indeed God's plan for Keezer to be fired from Home Depot, then why, one wonders, is Keezer unhappy with the outcome?


P.S. Many readers who have commented on this story on other sites have been outraged that Home Depot is violating Keezer's First Amendment rights. This is, however, quite untrue.


First of all, as law professor Michael Masinter points out in the Yahoo! news article, the First Amendment relates only to the government's ability to restrict the freedom of speech -- not to that of private companies like Home Depot. It says, in full, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Notice that the Amendment makes no mention of private companies.


More importantly, though, to construe Home Depot's actions as abridging the freedom of speech in any meaningful way is simply going too far. Home Depot has a policy governing, and therefore limiting, the way in which its employees can express themselves. So do schools that require their students to wear uniforms. So do businesses that require their employees to wear suits and ties. So too, do the United States Armed Forces, whose employees must wear uniforms (and, although they certainly care about defending the United States, those employees are not allowed to wear buttons expressing that sentiment, either). In each case these limitations are intended to a) make the group governed by them more effective, and b) create a certain culture. None of these institutions is guilty of violating the First Amendment, or of abridging anyone's freedom of speech, as a result.

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