to prevent you from engaging in more hate speech.
http://legalminds.lp.findlaw.com/list/queerlaw/msg02856.htmlOn-the-Job Slurs Not Free Speech
By RICHARD CARELLI, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Rejecting a free-speech appeal from the nation's
second-largest car rental company, the Supreme Court today refused to let
an Avis employee use ethnic epithets at his San Francisco International
Airport job.
The justices left intact a ruling in which the California Supreme Court
said an Avis Rent a Car service station manager who harassed co-workers
with bigoted words could be ordered to stop using such language at work in
the future.
Today's action, taken over Justice Clarence Thomas' dissent, set no
national precedent. But it left standing a decision Avis lawyers said
gives California judges "astounding'' new power to impose prior restraints
on speech.
The challenged ruling "obliterates fundamental free-speech guarantees,
concluding that racially offensive speech is constitutionally unprotected
and can be banned in advance in the workplace,'' the Avis lawyers said.
The Avis appeal did not challenge a jury's finding that both Avis and
station manager John Lawrence illegally discriminated against Hispanics
employed as drivers to move rental cars between parking lots and check-in
and service areas.
The company and Lawrence had been sued by 17 Hispanic employees in 1993.
The lawsuit said Lawrence's treatment of them - constantly calling them
vulgar and derogatory names based on their ethnicity and lack of English
skills - violated the state Fair Employment and Housing Act.
The lawsuit accused Avis of doing nothing to stop Lawrence.
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