> “No it isn’t. Your employer is not obligated to respect your rights to free speech.”
Iger is not her employer. She’s a corporation, not an employee. She’s worth more than $80 million.
Iger and Redstone have the right to terminate her contract according to the terms of the contract. All such contracts have boilerplate provisions that pertain to cancellation for cause, for issues that bring discredit, etc.
But she has the right to Free Speech.
And Iger/Redstone have the right to terminate her, But they don’t have the right to slander her. Their slander causes damage to her corporation. It’s actionable.
She would sue them because what she said is not racist. They said in the press that her comments were racist, No they were not. The Planet of the Apes has main characters that are White Apes, the film is not a racist film. The film’s theme is that the apes in the film were incapable of rendering justice, similar to Islam. Her statement could be construed as anti-Islamic, but not racist.
My bet is she won’t sue them because she doesn’t need them. They need her more than she needs them. Their enterprise is dying, their brands are dying. Barr is rich beyond what most Americans can even dream. She has and will continue to have a fine life. Her contract termination is actually a blessing because of the contract’s principals who are out of touch, biased and bigoted. Eventually, with persons like Iger and Redstone, there would have been a bumping of heads. That it happened sooner is not surprising.
ABC cancelled their business relationship with her over her comments. That's business, and not a First Amendment issue.
But she has the right to Free Speech.
And she exercised that right without the government taking any steps to prevent her, though right about now she might be wishing that they had.
And Iger/Redstone have the right to terminate her, But they dont have the right to slander her. Their slander causes damage to her corporation. Its actionable.
Then sue them. But she has to be able to prove that what Iger/Redstone said was false and that they knew it was false when they said it. How do you think she'll be able to prove that?
She would sue them because what she said is not racist.
In her opinion and yours perhaps. But it'd be interesting to see her try and convince a jury of that.
My bet is she wont sue them because she doesnt need them.
I don't think she'll sue them either, but not for the same reason.
This seems a good time to bring this up. I have always been a big Charleton Heston fan, (actually met him back in 1994) and I read something he wrote years ago.
He said that while he was working on the set of "Planet of the Apes" he noticed a peculiar occurrence. All the cast members were human actors, but when it came to taking lunch at the studio provided lunch tables, he noticed the "gorillas" would sit with the "gorillas", the "chimpanzees" would sit with the "chimpanzees", and the "humans" would sit with the "humans."
Very little interaction occurred between actors playing different character parts. Each group self identified as the character type they were playing, and self segregated.
He said it opened for him a mental window on the nature of human social interaction.