Fired for personal use of official email? That can likely be defended, otherwise, suspect he’ll sue. Maybe will anyway.
That being said, I would definitely sue. I'm sure his legal team would find plenty of work accounts used for personal emails during discovery.
Employees have very few rights in Virginia. You can be fired for any reason or no reason at all (save for a few exceptions for the special super protected PC classes).
Police unions are virtually powerless in Virginia with no collective bargaining allowed.
If he is still represented by the union, then they should have a pretty good case of past precedence and file a grievance.
“That can likely be defended, otherwise, suspect he’ll sue.”
Unless the government is footing the bill, it’s nearly impossible for the average person to sue. A lawyer will tell you it’s ten thousand dollars down now and he’ll call you when he wants more. He will burn through the money at anywhere from $350-1500 per hour. The legal business is a business. You the client are like a natural resource to be exploited. The opposing side will keep your lawyer busy answering phone calls and responding to court demands. They will run you out of money. That’s something my lawyer did to win a case for me. But, he charged me virtually most of my winnings. Because lawyers are evil ba$tard$ and you are like a vein of coal or oil to them; to be used, not taken care of.
As for wrongful dismissal, probably not if he violated a policy, which he arguably did. My company fired someone for plugging his USB charger into his company computer. At most that should have been a reprimand or a letter in the file. However, since they wanted to get rid of him and he’d violated a policy, there was nothing he could do about it. As a lawyer told me when something similar happened to me, “If you were black I’d take the case as the government pays the bill and they’d know they were f——ed. They’d settle or we could go on forever. But, you’re not, so $10,000 down and they WILL run you out of money.”
He should sue. I doubt it will be difficult to find official e-mail addresses being used for all kinds of personal business. He was singled out.