1) Can you make a legal argument justifying his firing given that after years of going on pundit shows, he suddenly fired for going on a pundit show? That part of his contract clearly seems to have been waived due to non-action on the employers part.
2) If the firing is for what he said, can you make a legal argument justifying his firing given the examples listed earlier in this thread of conduct tolerated by NPR?
He is probably lucky to be have been a contract employee, because in the U.S., most non-contract employees will not get the benefit of either of those arguments in a U.S. court, they are just too liberal and anti-business.
Now, he probably has a contract, but there is likely a clause in it that states in so many words that blowing off a violation does not waive the right to crack down on it later (very standard boilerplate in U.S. business contracts of all types).
As to the second, that argument would likely not hold up either. The court woud look at the 4 corners of his contract and it likely does not have a clause that would help him out there, so we are back to basic U.S. labor law, which again, heavily favors a business over an employee. But I can feel you frustration with those arguments not getting anywhere, comrade.
Now given that Juan seems to hold some very conservative values, I don't even expect him to file a frivolous lawsuit asking for an activist judge to grant him a judically created windfall.
No they can't if they haven't issued official, documented warnings, and it's my understanding that they did not issue him any warnings of any kind.
They don't have the right to terminate someone for making a simple statement about how they feel, not even stating an opinion, just a personal feeling that btw takes on a different tone when you see the rest of what he said.
You do not need documented warnings unless his contract requires it. If you don't like the way the law operates in this area, support your local (non-
YellowBlue Dog) Democrat.
Unless his contract specifically protects him, he can be fired for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason at all, just as long as NPR didn't violate any anti-discrimination statutes, none of which are applicable here.
Given the leverage NPR likely had in his last round of contract negotiations (he was generic enough from a high profile standpoint to be replaceable), I woukd be suorised if he had flanguage favorable to him in this situation.
Even if he sued and prevailed, the damages would only be the difference in pay between his NPR contract and Fox contract, assuming Fox is an evil enough employer to treat him worse than even NPR did (from a pay standpoint). Even then, it could be argued that since the new contract was signed so quickly, the market value oof his services on the date of firing equals what the most willing of employers contracted to pay, so NPR actually did the great free market thing by taking an action that resulted in the most efficient adjustment to actual free market values.
