In Surdak v. DXC Technology (decided Dec. 20 by Judge Stanley Blumenfeld, Jr. (C.D. Cal.), but just posted a few days ago on Westlaw), plaintiff claimed he was fired (1) because of his "complaints … that he was not being paid all his wages" and (2) "in retaliation for posting a tweet on his personal Twitter account and complaining that DXC's request that he remove the tweet constituted illegal censorship"; "Plaintiff's colleague filed an internal complaint about the tweet, posted by Plaintiff, which stated, 'I'll have those niggers voting Democrat for the next 200 years,' and attributed the quote to Lyndon B. Johnson."
I'll skip the wage complaint question here, and turn to the Tweet issue, which arises under California's employee free speech statutes; opinions applying such statutes are fairly rare, though this one struck me as noteworthy:
However, Plaintiff also alleges that he was terminated in violation of Cal. Labor Code §§ 1101 and 1102. "Sections 1101 and 1102 of the California Labor Code prohibit employers from interfering with the fundamental right of employees in general to engage in political activity." Couch v. Morgan Stanley & Co. Inc., 656 F. App'x 841, 842 (9th Cir. 2016) (internal quotation omitted). "Liability … is triggered only if an employer fires an employee based on a political motive." A political motive might include "punishing him for expressing political views contrary to [the employer's] or, by discharging plaintiff, attempting to discourage other employees from expressing political views different from [the employer's]." Nava v. Safeway Inc., No. F063775, 2013 WL 3961328, at *8 (Cal. Ct. App. July 31, 2013).
