Difficult Civil Rights Question

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

When I ran a business I made hiring decisions. I would not have hired anyone involved with the Klan unless it was in their past and they had decided it was a mistake and maybe made amends.

I don't think it should be any different in hiring someone to be a police officer. As a citizen and taxpayer I want the best hiring decisions to be made on my behalf. Everything in a person's past is fair game.

You running a business is a quite different situation...there's little dispute possible about what are "the best hiring decisions" in that case. A private employer has considerably more leeway in hiring decisions.

But besides that, this isn't a hiring decision, it's a firing one. Would you have fired a twenty year employee for becoming a Klansman? Do you think the unemployment compensation people have backed you up as to it being "for cause" if you did? Certainly the arbitrator didn't think so in this case, and the court has ordered the arbitrator's decision be enforced. We'll see if the Nebraska AG is able to come up with a theory that the courts will buy, here.

I recall some cases during the last presidential election where people were fired for having the wrong party's sticker on their car in the company parking lot. That doesn't sound too much different from this, unless the issue is actually which parties you think are "legitimate" because you find their platforms acceptable.