Can you be fired for refusing to lie? If your employer asks you to lie about something, and telling the lie is legal, but you refuse on moral grounds, can they fire you? Does it matter if religious beliefs are involved? (For example, if a Christian saying &quot;I believe the Bible says lying is wrong&quot; is protected, is an atheist saying &quot;I believe the world would be a better place if people didn't lie&quot; also protected?)
united-states Since &quot;lying&quot; is not a clearly-defined legal concept, we need to look at a specific kind of (non)statement. Some lies are plainly illegal, for instance saying in the context of a sale that &quot;this column is made of pressure-treated lumber&quot; when in fact it is make of sand and Elmer's glue is fraud. A receptionist being told to say &quot;Mr. Smith is at a conference in New York&quot; when he is actually drunk in Chicago is a legal lie. Now the question is, who can refuse to tell this lie (without suffering employment consequences), and on what grounds? Generally, in the US you can be ordered to tell such a legal lie as part of your employment duties. If I refuse, I can be fired. If you refuse, you can request a reasonable accommodation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, since you proffer that your religion requires you to tell the truth / forbids you from telling a falsehood. If you make a claim for a religious accommodation, then the issue becomes whether there is a reasonable alternative. Such an accommodation might be that you instead say &quot;Mr. Smith is not available&quot;; or perhaps someone else who does not have a religious objection will be forced to act as receptionist for the day. This is specifically about religion. &quot;I don't want to&quot; or any similar idea does not provide protection against being fired. However, bear in mind that there is no official list of approved religions and their beliefs which the courts will refer to in determining whether your refusal was protected. If you claim &quot;As a Pastafarian, I can't lie&quot;, the courts will not accept the premise that declaring yourself to be Pastafarian (a parody &quot;religion&quot;) is valid. The available governmental resources on the fine line between general moral code and religious beliefs are quite sparse.
This particular statement ("Person A lacks professionalism and integrity") may be protected because it isn't sufficiently factual to be susceptible of being proved true or false. Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co. established that the test is whether "a reasonable factfinder could conclude that the statements [...] imply [a defamatory assertion]". The court mentioned that "loose, figurative, or hyperbolic language" would negate the impression that "[the speaker] was seriously maintaining [the defamatory claim]. The court also considered "the article's general tenor". It also emphasized that the statement was "sufficiently factual that it is susceptible of being proved true or false". Said in other ways: Is the statement "sufficiently factual to be susceptible of being proved true or false"? Can the statement "reasonably be interpreted as stating actual facts about an individual"?
At Will Employment - In General An &quot;at will&quot; employee in the U.S. can be fired at any time for any reason without any prior notice or warning. Outside a union shop or a civil service employment situation, even an illegal reason for firing does not give you the right to be reinstated in your job - instead it gives you a right to sue for money damages. Unemployment Benefits and Employment References If you are fired for good cause (or you quit in a situation that is not a constructive termination), you are not entitled to unemployment benefits. If you are fired without cause particular to your conduct (e.g. you are laid off in the employer's reduction in the size of the employer's labor force), or your are fired for a reason that is not good cause (e.g. you are fire because the boss is annoyed because you are such a goody two shoes that you always show up to work on time), you may be entitled to unemployment benefits based upon your term of service and earnings (short time employees are often not entitled to unemployment benefits no matter what). If you apply for unemployment benefits because you assert that you were fired without good cause, and the employer believes you were fired for good cause, the employer can dispute that finding in a summary administrative hearing. Employers fight awards of unemployment benefits for employees who are fired rather than laid off, because it affects the employer's unemployment insurance rates (and because they care, for non-economic reasons, if the integrity of their stated reasons for firing someone are not believed, or if their reasons for firing someone are not considered to be legitimate grounds for termination by a government agency). Even if you are entitled to unemployment benefits, these benefits are much smaller than your regular pay, and generally last less long than the period for which you were employed. A formula or calculator should appear on the Texas Workforce Commission Website. I assume when you say that &quot;They put a few fake tags on me&quot; that this means that they stated reasons that would be valid &quot;for cause&quot; reasons for termination and you dispute those reasons apply to you, but please clarify if I am mistaken. If that is the case, it is likely that you would have to fight for any unemployment benefits you are otherwise entitled to in an administrative hearing as the company is likely to contest your claim that you were not fired for good cause. This also means that if you seek new employment that they will give you a bad reference to someone who inquires about your employment (although many HR departments are afraid to do that for fear of defamation liability and will only confirm the dates of your employment and your position). Wrongful Termination Lawsuits Separate and apart from unemployment benefits, if you are fired, not just without cause, but for an illegal reasons (e.g. race, sex, and select statutory prohibited reasons), you may bring a wrongful termination lawsuit. Some of those reasons (firings related to discrimination by a private sector employer) require you to file an EEOC complaint and have it investigated by them first, other of those reasons (mostly whistle blowing statutes and breaches of written employment contracts that don't allow for termination of employment without cause) allow you to immediately bring suit for wrongful termination. The legal status of firing someone because you complained about another employee's ethical violation depends upon the exact nature of the ethical violation. For example, a U.S. Supreme Court case decided this month (i.e. February/March 2018) held that whistle blower protections under U.S. securities laws apply to people who report securities fraud to the SEC, but not to people who report securities fraud to a supervisor in the company. &quot;My fellow employee was a lying asshole who acted unprofessionally (in non-technical sense of the word), and I complained about this conduct to my supervisor and the employer didn't care&quot; standing alone, would not normally constitute conduct that is covered by a whistle blowing statute that could allow you to bring a lawsuit for wrongful termination of employment, although it might constitute a constructive termination for bad cause by an employer (if you quit) or termination for bad cause by an employer (if you were fired) for unemployment insurance purposes. The legal theory behind the amount of damages that can be awarded in a wrongful termination lawsuit is a bit obscure. As a rule of thumb, six months wages is a pretty typical settlement amount in a wrongful termination case prior to a determination by a court of employer liability. At trial, there is wide variation in what juries award in wrongful termination lawsuits involving similar facts. Sometimes the award is minimal even when the jury finds that the employer wrongfully fired you, and sometimes the award is very substantial, amounting to many years of lost income in amount. Contractual Payment Obligations Generally speaking, unless a written contract provides otherwise, you have no obligation to return a hiring bonus and the employer has a contractual duty (and probably a statutory one as well) to pay you through the date of termination without deduction for a hiring bonus paid. This includes any amounts, including bonuses, that the employer was obligated to pay you, although proving an entitlement to a bonus can be difficult unless that standard for receiving one is clearly defined and you clearly met those standards as a factual matter. Sometimes, you can even win a breach of contract award for a bonus that was not yet fully earned if the only reason that the bonus was not awarded was the employer's bad faith conduct. You could sue to collect unpaid wages in a Justice Court (the limited jurisdiction court for small claims in Texas) if necessary, if the amount you are claiming is under $10,000. If you have a claim for unpaid wages in a larger amount or also have other damages, you would need to bring suit in the appropriate county court or district court, depending upon the amount claimed.
The term &quot;racism&quot; is a political one, not a legal one, which refers to a belief. It is not illegal in the US, and it is a belief that is protected under the First Amendment. There is a legal construct, &quot;discrimination on the basis of race&quot;, which enters into laws. For example, you may not discriminate in employment on the basis of race: but those law don't distinguish discrimination in favor and discrimination against. Hate crimes are crimes which additionally discriminate on the basis of some protected class (see &quot;discrimination&quot;). Assaulting a person because they are white, black, Catholic, atheist, male or female is a hate crime. Everybody falls into one or more protected categories (everybody has some race, religion including lack, and sex) – hate crime laws add &quot;because of&quot;, for those extra penalties. Assalting a white, black, male or female person is not a hate crime, by itself. The government is not the only source of reigning in of speech that you don't like, in fact, it isn't way of suppressing speech that you don't like at all, at least as long as we have the First Amendment. An employer has the right to hire a racist, or to fire a racist, at least until the law changes.
Partial answer (other parts of an answer would be jurisdiction specific): Would this constitute a slander lawsuit against the group of employees and outside agency? The employee falsely alleged to be mentally ill would be the plaintiff who would be the only person who would have standing to bring suit. The person allegedly making a false statement to someone other than the employee alleged to be mentally ill (an action which is called &quot;publication&quot; of a false statement) would be the defendant(s). Listening to an allegedly false statement about someone is not slander, nor is believing it to be true. In the U.S., in most cases, knowledge of the truth or reckless disregard for the truth (or at least negligence in getting the facts wrong in private persons cases not involving a public interest) is necessary to establish liability. Someone who doesn't know that a statement is false and has some basis to believe it is true, can't be guilty of slander. In many non-U.S. jurisdictions, slander liability is possible without knowledge that the statement made is false (and without reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of the statement). Also, it matter who the &quot;outside agency&quot; is in this case. Governmental agencies are typically immune from liability for slander for statements made in the course of their official duties. Without a fuller understanding of who is saying something and why, it is hard to evaluate the claim appropriately.
A witness is not evidence, but what a witness says (their testimony) may be evidence. Or, the body of a person who happened to be a witness is evidence. I suspect that there is a translation problem. It is always physically possible to try pay a person to lie and AFAIK never legal: the person who lies and the person who induces the lie will be punished by law. The witness who testifies will have to swear that their testimony is the truth.
if these questions and answers are found to be legally binding ... They aren’t. Therefore the premise of your question is flawed. It’s like asking “If my dog was a cat ...”. Well, since your dog isn’t a cat we don’t need to hear the rest of the question.
Yes and no. While there are no general laws that ban the display of offensive symbols, they are prohibited in certain circumstances. Significantly, this is in the workplace. It is illegal to discriminate on the following bases in the workplace: Race Sex Pregnancy Religion National origin Disability (physical or mental, including HIV status) Age (for workers over 40) Military service or affiliation Bankruptcy or bad debts Genetic information Citizenship status (for citizens, permanent residents, temporary residents, refugees, and asylees) For instance, in Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth, 524 US 742 (1998), the majority found: a plaintiff claiming employment discrimination based upon race could assert a claim for a racially hostile work environment, in addition to the classic claim of so-called "disparate treatment." Since you haven't been specific about the nature of the offensive symbol, some examples might be: displaying a swastika displaying sexually offensive material displaying racially offensive material These are likely only to apply if the employer ought to have known, or did in fact know, that an employee (or in some cases, the customers) of a business would be offended, or it would amount to discrimination. Of course, a single display of only the symbol is not likely, on its own, to create a hostile work environment - it would need to be considered with the rest of the facts - but it can certainly be a contributing factor. It's a bit difficult to list all the situations where similar laws might apply, but this is one of the most prominent (and, to be honest, one of the ones that I'm personally interested in).