It certainly can count as both hostility and free speech. Often the most contentious examples of free speech are highly hostile: hate speech, for example. Therefore the context is rather, is this protected speech? A private company can discipline an employee for their speech in the name of the company, and that would be okay, since that is not protected speech. And the ruling by the court appears to be that this is indeed protected speech, in which case the free speech categorization trumps the hostility categorization.