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Eeven though you quit, what happened to you could be seen as “constructive discharge”—in other words, they intentionally made working there so unbearable for you that any reasonable person would have quit; hence, a court may look at the situation as amounting to the same thing as if they’d fired you wrongfully, and you’d be entitled to damages.

There is such a category known as “viewpoint discrimination,” as far as I know.

I’m of two minds as far as all the discrimination/harassment law stuff goes; part of me sees it all as just Marxism in the workplace, and at the same time there’s the part of me that says if such laws are used to protect people based on race, gender, and so on, then they should also be used to protect whites, males, conservatives, Christians, etc...employment discrimination law can be a horribly nightmarish Alice-in-Wonderland rabbit-hole of bizarre contradictions and Orwellian dystopia. Sometimes I really think employers should just be allowed to hire/reject whoever the hell they wish, for whatever whim or prejudice or any other basis they see fit. Free enterprise, eh?

I’m not an attorney, but I’m familiar enough with employment law to comment—you have a case, if you choose to got that route, as I see it.

It basically comes down to what you believe ethics-wise as far as who is responsible for your situation, and whether you can stomach a legal confrontation—even if it never actually goes all the way to court. Chances are it won’t; if you stick to your guns, they’re more likely to just offer you a settlement to get you out of their hair and be done with it and avoid a lengthy, costly battle. You would wind up with a tidy sum of money, and perhaps feel vindicated, or maybe even a bit sleazy for having shaken them down for money, or whatever. But it sounds like they did you dirty.

I have had various situations where I might have done what I’m suggesting for you to do. But looking back on them, in whatever case it was I either didn’t know my rights enough to follow such a course, or was just too depressed to find the energy to do anything at all, or I felt that the fault was mainly my own, and couldn’t rationalize going after the other party to force a settlement or whatever...I also know of situations where people who I believe to be dishonest scumbags have gotten fired or quit because they were basically worthless troublemakers, and nonetheless they hired lawyers and obtained large settlements from their former employers.

My heart goes out to you. I’ve been in almost the exact same situation, and my instinct is to tell you to get a lawyer (even if one tells you that you have no case, another one might say otherwise).

Perhaps you’ll stick it to those commies good for ME, for all the times I’ve just walked away from a job like that! And maybe let me know how it comes out...