EUGENE VOLOKH: Marquette University tells employees: “Opposition to same-sex marriage” could be “unlawful harassment”.
Given that Wisconsin law bans sexual orientation discrimination, and that discrimination laws have been read as banning “hostile environment harassment” — including political and social commentary that offends people based on race, religion, sex and (in those states that cover this) sexual orientation discrimination — there is indeed a risk that such speech by co-workers would be found to be unlawful. But this risk is far from a certainty, and there are indeed cases (e.g., this one) stating that the First Amendment forbids legal liability for this sort of political or social commentary overheard by offended co-workers. (The First Amendment, of course, doesn’t itself bar private employers from restricting employee speech, but it would indeed bar legal liability that pressures employers to restrict such speech.) . . .
A professor at Marquette . . . tells me: “[T]he new harassment training, which McAdams mentions on his blog and which we as faculty all had to go through this fall, has a chilling quality to it, … then basically urging people, when in doubt, to refrain from expression.”
That’s the idea.
Related: Marquette suspends prof’s teaching, orders him off campus:
In November, Prof. John McAdams (Marquette political science) — who blogs at Marquette Warrior — wrote a post critical of a philosophy instructor, Cheryl Abbate. . . . The post faulted Abbate for allegedly not allowing criticism of homosexuality in class discussions (the quotes appear to be from the student who had approached McAdams to complain about Abbate):
Abbate explained that “some opinions are not appropriate, such as racist opinions, sexist opinions” and then went on to ask “do you know if anyone in your class is homosexual?” And further “don’t you think it would be offensive to them” if some student raised his hand and challenged gay marriage? The point being, apparently that any gay classmates should not be subjected to hearing any disagreement with their presumed policy views. . . .
She went on “In this class, homophobic comments, racist comments, will not be tolerated.” She then invited the student to drop the class.