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Thursday, April 21, 2016

ESPN Fires Curt Schilling Over Facebook Post

ESPN fired Curt Schilling, a former major league baseball star after he made an offensive Facebook post.  This was not the first time that Schilling's social media behavior had gotten him in trouble; however, this post was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.  It showed a photo of a man that appeared to be dressed as a woman and stated, "LET HIM IN" TO THE RESTROOM WITH YOUR DAUGHTER OR ELSE YOUR'RE A NARROW MINDED, JUDGMENTAL, UNLOVING, RACIST BIGOT WHO NEEDS TO DIE!!!

Last year, Schilling was suspended from ESPN for an offensive Tweet that compared some Muslims with Nazis.  In that case, Schilling deleted the post and quickly apologized. However, during this social media crisis instead of apologizing for the post quickly he doubled down and defended it on his blog.  

Schilling has the right to voice his opinions. However, under his agreement with ESPN there is most likely a morals clause and under ESPN's social media policy it most likely enables it to fire him for making those opinions public on social media.  Most jobs in the U.S. are at-will meaning that employees may be fired for any reason or no reason at all that doesn't violate public policy (i.e. discrimination-age, race, gender, religion etc...) 

Schilling's reputation has taken a tremendous hit.  It is highly questionable whether he will be given another opportunity by a large media company to be a sports commentator.  It wasn't just one offensive social media post that did him in.  Schilling's cumulative comments online and offline and how he responded to them made it easy for ESPN to fire him.  

Copyright 2016 by the Law Office of Bradley S. Shear, LLC. All rights reserved.

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