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Comment by 0xy | Hacker News Reader

Political beliefs are a protected class in practically every first world country, including the US. If an employee was a member of a fascist party it'd quite literally be illegal to fire them on that basis.

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No, political beliefs are a protected class in practically every first world country, but excluding the US; in most states (excluding, IIRC, California - which matters a lot here) it would be legal for a private employer to fire an employee for being a member of the Democrat or Republican party.

The key employee anti-discrimination law is the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibits employers from discriminating against applicants and employees on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin - but not political affiliation.

> […] a member of the Democrat or Republican party.

It’s the Democratic party.

I don't understand the point, all of the firms mentioned in the OP are headquartered and have the majority of their staff in California, where it's illegal to fire for political beliefs.

State, federal or Civil Rights Act or not, it's illegal.

California Labor Code 1101 and 1102 LC expressly forbids it, including retaliatory actions (which is a much lower bar than firing).

In California, being passed up for promotion or being discriminated against in ANY way as a result of your political beliefs or activities is illegal.

Whether or not it’s strictly illegal to, for example, blacklist people from their professions for being suspected members of the Communist Party, at some point we agreed it was a bad thing to do so.

I guess the question now is, was there a general principle behind that, or are we just cool with Stalinism now?

political affiliation is a protected class in DC though.

This is the correct answer.

Believe it or not it’s completely legal to fire someone in California for going to a black lives matter protest or a conservative conference.

This is false. [1]

[1] https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/labor/harassment/political-reta...

Do you have any references? This is somewhat surprising to me.

>> If an employee was a member of a fascist party it'd quite literally be illegal to fire them on that basis.

I think the moment company starts taking heat on internet/talk shows/etc. for "employing fascists" that employee will get booted out for poor performance/HR complaints/staff cuts/etc. Or somehow he will resign himself ("no-no, we didn't force him out" company spokesman said in a statement).

I don’t think that is really true. The government can’t suppress speech due to political disagreements with it but private individuals (and “legal individuals” aka corporations) can discriminate based on political beliefs, even religious beliefs. Gender, race, national origin, these are traditional protected categories, and we are adding more as a consensus grows that other sorts of prejudice are harmful to the social compact, but you can be fired for thinking differently in a heartbeat. As mentioned elsewhere, unions can even out some of the capriciously used power of the bosses, but otherwise I think the law is not protecting anyone.

Point of order, in the US, religious belief/creed is a protected class. You can't fire someone for being Jewish, for example.

On the other hand, certain beliefs of certain religions would be potentially incompatible with workplace discrimination law, including law that protects other protected classes. So it gets a little murky. One thing you can say is that if you have a religious belief that isn't causing you to bother other people, that's protected in the U.S.

You are correct about political beliefs, though. At least as far as I can find, political affiliation is not protected. But even if it were, this would necessarily not cover all possible political beliefs, for the same murkiness reasons as above.

I think the case law is pretty clear that you can have an organization that refuses to hire gay people because of religion or people who don’t follow a certain religion, even for jobs like janitor (as opposed to priest).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group#United_States You're just not going to find a list of protected classes in the United States that doesn't include religion, edge cases notwithstanding.

From every place I've personally seen mention of protecting groups in terms of hiring, they always copy-paste a cookie-cutter list of "protected classes". But political beliefs has never been one of them. I have this weird habit of checking each time. And it only differs by adding additional items related to the newer "classes" like gender/sex.

Political beliefs are not a protected class federally but some states and DC may offer protections. I think a majority of states do not, however.

100% of the companies in the OP are headquartered in a state that does, however. Including the vast majority of their employees.

California has strict protections, including protection from retaliation.

Yes, the GP was speaking about the US at large offering those protections, which it does not.

Yeah, but if you hire a fascist and you know they're a fascist in a company where the majority of your workers is not a fascist, you're going to have problems. Even if you discover after hiring them that they're fascist you'll have unhappy workers. You'll find a way to fire that fascist or lose the rest of the company.

That sucks tbh. It should be legal to fire a fascist.

Said no fascist ever.

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