Protecting Your 1st Amendment Rights at Work
An employer may have infringed on the First Amendment rights of an employee if the employee is deterred from complaining about discrimination. For example, if an employee complains to his or her superior about workplace conditions, and then that employee is subsequently transferred to another position in retaliation, the retaliatory adverse transfer is used as a deterrent for future speech against the company. If an employee feels that he or she may be punished for their speech, then an infringement on the employee’s First Amendment rights has occurred. Even minor acts of retaliation can infringe on an employee’s First Amendment rights.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit published Thomas v. County of Riverside on August 18, 2014, wherein the Court held that Wendy Thomas’ First Amendment rights were violated when her employer transferred her position back and forth between day shift and graveyard shift, removed her from a community college teaching assignment (causing her to lose $9,000 per year), prohibited her from using break time to travel between work sites, rescinded a previously approved vacation, and removed her from a committee – all done within a short period of time after acts of speech.
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