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Comment by transitionality | Hacker News Reader

Backdooring his employer's code would be directly related to his work, and illegal actions on his own time would make him unemployable if caught and convicted, because he'd go to prison. False equivalances, all.

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OK, if you need to picky, something more comparable. Imagine he said: "black people are inferior to white people and don't deserve to be happy".

It's certainly illegal to fire someone over that opinion, yes.

It depends entirely on his contract - I'd expect most CEOs to have a clause about their conduct causing harm to the organisation. Even if not, it's legal to convince someone to leave, which is what usually happens in public embarrassment cases.

It's illegal to discriminate against someone on the basis of their political stance. Nothing you can say will ever change that.

If that were true, no congressperson could ever staff an office. Or a campaign.

If a Republican wanted to work for a Democrat, and if he were denied employment for that reason alone, that would be illegal, yes.

I don't know where you're getting this idea from, but you really should check your sources.

There is a limited prohibition against screening for political affiliations enforced by the Federal government when filling certain civil service positions, but that's about it.

For a good summary of what types of discrimination can and cannot trigger legal liability, see here:

http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/qanda.html

No it's not. Indeed, you run a legal risk in NOT firing such a person given that keeping them around (especially in a senior position) creates a demonstrably hostile work environment.

FYI: You are responding to a troll.

Another comparable example: He donated 10,000 to the Nazi party.

That would be a hell of an accomplishment, seeing as how the Nazi Party hasn't existed for more than half a century.

Wrong again. http://www.americannaziparty.com

That is not the Nazi Party though, is it?

For the purposes of the parent's argument, it's just fine. And you know it.

That's a terrible semantic argument. Of course it's not the actual Nazi Party, but if the Mozilla CEO donated $1000 to the ANP people would be pretty angry.

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