Employer Trying to Deny Me Unemployment. My vindictive former employer, not content with abruptly firing me without notice that I had done anything "wrong" and refusing me severance pay, is also challenging my right to receive unemployment benefits. I received a notice from the State of New Jersey that "[I] may have been separated for misconduct in connection with [my] work." What outrageous bull.
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I am to be telephone-interviewed tomorrow morning by Unemployment to get my side of the story, but I don't know in advance what I should say nor how to prepare, because I don't know what "misconduct in connection with [my] work" I am supposed to have engaged in. I will, however, make my own points, that such charges are likely frivolous, bogus and pretextual for what may well be unlawful discrimination.
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I am allowed to have witnesses speak to Unemployment but know of no witnesses to statements by my former employer that would prove discriminatory intent, but people who intend to violate antidiscrimination laws to discriminate against a person for one thing -- or several things -- while using another thing as pretext do not ordinarily speak openly about intending to discriminate illegally. I will merely tell Unemployment that I am a

1. single,
   
2. homosexual,
   
3. partially disabled
   
4. Christian
   
5. man, who
   
6. turned 60 years old 15 days before I was fired, and only a few days after the office manager expressed surprise that I was that old, by
   
7. Jews from
   
8. a job (legal secretary) that is typically held by women, within a month after
   
9. the firm's health plan became subject to extraordinary costs due to the long-term admission of its managing partner, who may need a heart transplant (with all its attendant costs) a few short months after the firm's health-insurance premiums went up sharply. I was told that one particular webpage of mine was offensive to the firm, but that page comprises over 30,000 words and includes
   
10. religious criticisms of Judaism as well as
    
11. political opposition to Zionism.
    

I cannot know if all the other things THAN item 11 of this list were irrelevant to the decision to fire me or if any, several, or all of them combined with objections to my political views as to cause my termination, nor even if they are simply using my political views as pretext to fire me, and they really wanted to get rid of me for one or several of the other 10 items in this list, or some other reason not permitted by antidiscrimination law.
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If ANY of those protected areas played ANY PART in the decision to fire me, the firm is guilty of illegal discrimination. That is, if I had made the exact same political remarks but would not have been fired except that I also made religious remarks or was homosexual or just turned 60 or was disabled or any of the other things on the list above, then the firm has acted illegally.
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They will presumably deny that anything but my political remarks mattered
in their decision, and will prep anyone Unemployment may talk to to stick to that line.
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Mere denial of illegal activity does not, of course, constitute proof that they haven't used unprotected political expression as pretext for firing someone for MORE than just political expression, especially inasmuch as the particular webpage they cite and this blog have commented critically on religious precepts of Judaism, not just political objections to Zionism. If they are striking out at me because of my religious views, they are presumably guilty of illegal religious discrimination. Others of my webpages than the one cited, and my blog, have also criticized various religious doctrines, and I said expressly in this blog on April 21, 2004:

I reject many teachings from many religions, from antihomosexualism and animal sacrifice in the Old Testament (Jewish) book of Leviticus, to "predestination" in Calvinism (before a person is born, God chooses who will go to heaven and who to hell, and there's nothing anyone can do to change that fate), to reincarnation (and thus the insignificance of this present life) in Buddhism, to the caste system (people choose, between lives, what caste they will belong to in the next life, and it is not for us to make life better for people in a low caste because they chose to suffer its conditions) in Hinduism.
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The difference between rejection of doctrine and religious bigotry is that the bigot (or zealot) says that because s/he rejects a given doctrine, no one should be allowed to believe it! I don't say any such thing. If anybody wants to believe the ridiculous things I find detestable, that's fine with me, as long as they don't try to inflict that doctrine on me. Thus it is defensible to reject the antihomosexualism of Leviticus but indefensible to use the power of the state to suppress homosexuality because "God says so". * * *

Judaism and Zionism are not beyond discussion or criticism. Nothing is.

I might also add here that it is also indefensible to fire a person from a job he is performing very well, because of his religious views, using closely related political views as pretext. We'll see what Unemployment says.

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:47 PM