According to MSNBC, an employee has sued the Library of Congress for firing him after his manager discovered that he had “liked” the “Two Dads” page on Facebook. The employee, Peter TerVeer, claims that after his manager discovered he was gay, his performance reviews turned negative. TerVeer also claims that the manager started making derogatory statements about his sexual orientation and sending religiously motivated emails.
Let me offer three takeaways for businesses from this story:
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Title VII, like Ohio’s anti-discrimination statute, does not protect sexual orientation. Nevertheless, courts have been known to stretch the definition of gender to include sexual orientation in certain cases. Even if TerVeer doesn’t have a sex discrimination claim, the religious overtones of the manager’s emails could provide a claim based on religion.
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Much has been made lately about employers snooping on employees’ social media activities. According to nbclosangeles.com, however, the manager only learned about TerVeer’s Facebook activities when the manager’s daughter noticed the “like” and told her dad. This fact underscores what Lafe Solomon (the NLRB’s acting general counsel) told me when we appeared on NPR together last fall—that every social media charge filed with the NLRB started with a co-worker printing out the social media post and giving the hard copy to a manager. In other words, management as much of a hobby out of snooping on its employees as some would have you believe.
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Despite this story’s foreboding tone, employers should not think that all employees’ off-work activities are off-limits. Nevertheless, this story underscores that employers need to tread very carefully when examining what their employees do on their own time.