MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) — Ken Webber still proudly flies his Confederate battle flag with the word “Redneck” emblazed across it from the CB antenna on his pickup truck. He hopes that his lawsuit in federal court will get his job back driving a school bus.
“What Mr. Webber is encapsulating is a Jeffersonian agrarianism, where you stand up for your rights,” attorney Thomas Boardman argued Thursday in U.S. District Court. “If we are going to say someone cannot identify as a redneck, what else can we not identify ourselves as?”
Attorneys for bus company First Student Inc. and the Phoenix-Talent School District countered that Webber himself said that the flag, a gift from his father, represented his “redneck” lifestyle, where family comes first, and people enjoy hunting, fishing and driving four-wheel-drive trucks through the mud. They said the flag did not represent any kind of political speech that would be protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The arguments came on a motion filed by the bus company and the school district asking the judge to decide the case based on legal arguments without going to a trial before a jury. Magistrate Judge Mark Clarke took the matter under advisement. No trial date has been set.
Married and the father of four young children, Webber was fired last March after refusing bus company orders to take down the flag, cover it, or park some distance away from school property. Since losing his job, he has been taking classes at community college.
School Superintendent Ben Bergreen had seen the flag on a visit to the bus yard and demanded that the flag be removed from school property, citing a policy prohibiting symbols that could be offensive to minorities.
Apparently no one could see the word ‘Redneck.” I am not quite sure what I think of this story. In the first place, Oregon isn’t the place I think of for incidents like this to happen. Secondly, I don’t like this dude calling himself a redneck just because of the Confederate Flag. Thirdly, I don’t like the superintendent declaring the Confederate Flag an object of racism simply because it exists.
Now, if someone tells you to take something down if you want to keep your job, it makes sense to assess whether you want the job or not and act accordingly. Maybe you just need to live in the South near a battlefield to have mixed feelings about such things. Of course, one can’t live in Virginia without being near a battlefield. I grew up in the shadow of Monticello, I lived on Sunken Road in Fredericksburg and I live a stone’s throw from Bull Run. I guess that desensitizes a person.
Should Ken Webber have been fired? Will he win his job back? Is this a first amendment issue?
There were two free speech/employment cases decided in the past few days. In one, the court upheld the termination of the VP for Human Resources at the Univ of Toledo for anti-homosexual comments she made. The court noted that she was responsible for hiring and firing, and was supposed to be the one who implemented the university’s EEO policy. The link is below. In the other one, a teacher won reinstatement after she had been fired for comments she posted on Facebook. A child in her school had drowned during a beach field trip. She wrote on her FB page that she should take her 5th graders to the beach because I HATE THEIR GUTS. When someone asked if she would let a named student float away, she responded that she wouldn’t throw him a lifejacket for $1M. The judge said the penalty was too harsh and quoted a famous SCt passage: “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”
http://volokh.com/2012/02/07/government-employer-free-to-fire-human-resources-officials-who-publicly-criticize-the-propriety-of-gay-rights-laws/
@Moe,
Holy cow. Talk about fire in a burning building ….If that teacher identified herself as a teacher in a specific school system she should have been fired. She represents the school. What if the CEO of a major company goes out and moons the stockholders? What is too much?
How about all these kids who go on social network sites and say they want to blow up the building or gang rape and kill Mrs. Black, their science teacher. Those kids are suspended if the school gets wind of it.
The teacher was stupid and offensive. Perhaps she was having a bad day. Get over it. Go drink until you pass out but do not turn on that computer.
I don’t agee with his firing. But I do question someone’s sense of identity and self-esteem when they have to display something controversial like that for all world to see. Some people use the confederate flag as a giant middle finger. Guy’s a bus driver. What a loser.
Similar story
US Marines posed with Nazi symbol in Afghanistan
By JULIE WATSON | Associated Press – 9 hrs
SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Marine Corps on Thursday once again did damage control after a photograph surfaced of a sniper team in Afghanistan posing in front of a flag with a logo resembling that of the notorious Nazi SS — a special unit that murdered millions of Jews, gypsies and others.
The Corps said in a statement that using the symbol was not acceptable, but the Marines in the photograph taken in September 2010 will not be disciplined because investigators determined it was a naïve mistake.
http://news.yahoo.com/us-marines-posed-nazi-symbol-afghanistan-185101573.html
Those guys should’ve been court-martialed.
I don’t think they should have been court martialed but a good tour of duty in sensitivity training classes might be in order. I don’t buy into the naive mistake theory either. I do buy into young and stupid and tough guy image and I think a strong warning with permanent remarks in the personnel folder to be removed at the end of 5-10 years if no repeats of stupidity might be a solution.
I usually like what Mikey Weinstein does but I think he was on over-kill this time. Mikey has done a lot of work with helping to return the Air Force Academy to a more religiously neutral learning environment.
I would have fired him for desecrating the battle standard.
Mom, I am with you but he was out in Oregon. Not sure he would ever understand why he was being fired.
@Starryflights “Guy’s a bus driver. What a loser.”
Well, at least you’re not an elitist snob or anything.
So minorities merely need to ban together and designate something as offensive, and it’s gone? I sure hope I never offend a member of a minority……….poof! Gee have minorities ever offended someone? I guess not.
To Starry, yes, and some groups of people use their foul music lyrics as a giant middle finger, but nobody dare mentions that!
I think I did yesterday, SA. I agree with you.
@Emma
@Second Alamo
I said the guy shouldn’t have been fired.
Oregon just seems like strange place for this argument to be taking place. I can understand Lexington, Virginia. Oregon, not so much.
I’m sure this issue will pop up on a new episode of Portlandia soon.
What channel is Portlandia on? I have never seen it. Worthwhile?