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Terminating Employees for Unapproved Posts

By Shari Claire Lewis
February 27, 2011

Editor's Note: On Feb. 7, American Medical Response of Connecticut settled the case mentioned in this article. Under the agreement, which was reached one day before a hearing by an administrative law judge was scheduled to begin, American Medical (AM) agreed to revise its “overly broad” social media policies. The employee, Dawnmarie Souza, settled privately with AM. The main issue of the case, i.e., whether employee discussions on
Facebook constitutes concerted activity under labor laws, was not addressed in the settlement. The case remains an important one as a cautionary warning to employers to tread carefully before firing employees for their social media activities.

Once the bastion of college students and computer geeks, social media is now established means of communication for mainstream society ' be it commercial, political or personal speech.

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