Hacker News Reader

Comment by shawndrost | Hacker News Reader

I don't want to wade into the specifics of campus tribunals, but the broad mechanism here is very commonplace and uncontroversial, no? Eg if I work for an NSF grant recipient and I spit on my boss, and I get fired with no court ruling, would you find it confusing/objectionable?

View on HN

If firing you was a requirement to maintain the NSF grant? Yes, that would be objectionable, because then it isn't your boss (a private person/organization) but rather the government imposing the penalty without due process.

Unless I'm missing something, the principle you find objectionable is generally legal, widespread, and uncontroversial. In point of fact, the NSF requires grantees (and their scientists) to follow many requirements, and imposes penalties upon them without due process. Movie distributors force the same things on Netflix and their employees via partnership contracts. An umbrella organization like Boy Scouts imposes membership conduct requirements on its independent affiliates and their members.

In this case the government isn't just allowing the school to use judicial procedures the government itself couldn't use without violating due process, it's requiring them to. That's different.

And movie distributors and Boy Scouts are not the government. And when a private organization deals unfairly with a private person, due process is still available in the form of a court proceeding (e.g. a suit for unfair termination), but in this case that would either be dismissed (e.g. because the school was following federal requirements) or put the school in an impossible situation where the federal requirements require them to use an unreasonable procedure that subjects them to legal liability by an innocent accused person.

Yes, that would be objectionable, and probably not even legal, unless your boss was a member of a protected class and it could be shown that what you were doing was a hate action against the class and not the individual.

In the US, employers can fire employees for violating company policies (which presumably would forbid spitting on coworkers) even in cases where protected classes are not a factor. Is that the thing you think is objectionable, and maybe illegal?

You think it's literally illegal to fire someone for spitting on their boss?

The OP talked about getting fired "with no hearing". The days of bosses being absolute rulers that can just fire people instantly with a "You're fired!" isn't really true these days, even in places like the US with limited worker protection. Typically, hearings with HR are scheduled to see what and why things happened. This can result in the worker being fired, of course, but companies fear wrongful dismissal law suits that arise from bosses acting directly.

Okay, so how is that different from the campus sexual assault tribunals that everyone in this thread is objecting to?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com