Some Georgia workers are learning the limits of free speech as they face discipline for social media comments in the wake of the fatal shooting of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk.
Cobb County schools, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Delta Air Lines and a piano bar, Savannah Smiles, are among Georgia employers that have either fired or placed on leave employees because of comments related to Kirk’s stunning death last week.
GPB's Orlando Montoya talked with Emory law professor Deepa Das Acevedo about the intersection of free speech, employment law and social media.
Orlando Montoya: First of all, broadly speaking and briefly, where does the law in Georgia come down between protecting an employee's freedom of expression and protecting a company's reputational integrity?
Deepa Das Acevedo: So one thing that is important to remember as a baseline is that employees in the private workforce, whether they're in Georgia or elsewhere in the country, do not, generally speaking, have federal First Amendment rights at work. So you can be fired for something that you said on socials at a football game and so on. There might be some limitations on that, but we don't really have any of those limitations strongly applicable in Georgia.
Is there any difference between categories of workers in relation to the rights they have? For instance, perhaps back-of-the-house dishwasher versus corporate leader, or public versus private workers.
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