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Comment by charcircuit | Hacker News Reader

What would be illegal about firing an employee who you think is causing your company to get a bad image?

> The lawsuit says Instacart violated a California law that bars companies from preventing their employees from becoming candidates for public office, among other complaints.

What would be the consequences of ensuring that only those with enough personal wealth to be able to go without a job while campaigning can run for office?

The thing about legality is that you kinda get to chose. In your case the companies' interests weight more than the people's interest.

For example in the US it's totally legal to spy on your employees with key loggers &co, in most of Europe it isn't

Well in normal countries…firing them for something they did outside work. In American vernacular, something something free speech.

You have the right to free speech. Your employer, like anyone else, has a right to not be associated with what you say.

She approached to ask for permission. If they had any reservations, that was the time to discuss them. She did what was expected of an employee. The fact that they blessed her and then went back on their word seems wrong.

Not a lawyer but my intuition says there might be some legal grounds here favouring the wife.

My take is someone even higher up found out later and did not like it. Now it’s entirely possible the individuals who gave their blessings were supportive of the party the wife was standing for, and the ones above them weren’t? Still whoever blessed the campaign did so in their capacity as a senior officer of the company. A total shit show nevertheless.

To the original commenter: sorry this happened to your wife. Hope she’s able to find another job that treats her right. Also congrats on the baby, hoping parenthood makes up for all of this and more. Sending the best of wishes your way.

AFAIK in every US state a company can fire you for any reason that’s not protected, and “we told you this was okay but changed our minds” is as good a reason as any in the law’s eyes.

Correct. If she had something in writing, signed by a person with proper authority in the organization, she might be on stronger footing. But they could just find some other reason, or state "no reason" for her termination, and that's perfectly legal in an at-will employment.

I think Montana is the only state not "at-will"

Puerto Rico is technically not a state, but as part of the US, and counted in the statistics of the (federal) Department of Labor, I would also count it as a _not "at-will"_ state.

In many US states a company can fire you even for protected reasons, and just fabricate a reason that isn't protected. Of course there are examples of people fighting this because it sometimes is a fight worth having, but the vast majority just have to accept being discriminated against and try to find another job.

If I ask my employer if I can start a YouTube channel and then after getting permission I start posting videos that make the company look bad, and showing how awesome competitor products were I wouldn't be surprised if I got fired. I wouldn't be fired for the account but what I did with it.

We don’t know if the person did any such thing (bad mouth the company or its products).

However, in the scenario they did, then the company would have grounds to fire them.

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