Business Insider says nah, James Damore isn’t the new free speech hero the world has been looking for.

James Damore, the Google employee fired Monday for publishing a 10-page anti-diversity manifesto, almost certainly has not had his First Amendment free-speech rights infringed. If he sues Google — which Reuters reports he is considering — he will lose, unless he can find a court willing to create a new free-speech right for American workers.

Tuesday morning, the alt-right corners of the internet are rallying to Damore’s cause. He is a shining example of how the left bans certain conservative ideas and punishes people for trying to discuss them openly, they say. It is outrageous that someone can lose his

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on A culture of openness.

First, it’s definitely not a First Amendment issue, for reasons I think have been well-discussed, i.e. the 1st Amendment applies only to “state action,” and Google is a private employer.

There is, however, a federal statute — the National Labor Relations Act — which is the labor law issue A Masked Avenger references @3. Although people generally think of the NLRA as having to do with unions, and specifically protecting speech related to union organization, it is in fact broader than that. Here is a good explanation:

Section 7 of the NLRA grants the following protected right to all private-sector, non-supervisory employees:

“…to engage in… concerted activities for

On the one hand, shock-horror, Google has fired that nice James Damore simply for expressing his opinion, no one should ever be fired just for expressing an opinion.

On the other hand, just a couple of weeks ago the Labor Department was saying Google’s confidentiality policy was making it difficult to gather information on their demographics.

So is Google political correctness run amok or is it self-protective capitalism as usual?

The US Department of Labor has raised concerns that Google’s strict confidentiality agreements have discouraged employees from speaking to the government about discrimination as part of a high-profile wage inequality investigation.

Following a judge’s ruling that Google must hand over salary records and employee contact information to federal regulators