EMPLOYER INTERFERENCE, RESTRAINT, COERCION; DEFENSES – Business Necessity

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409.00000 – EMPLOYER INTERFERENCE, RESTRAINT, COERCION; DEFENSES
409.01000 – Business Necessity

Allegation that public school employer promulgated, maintained and enforced policy specifically prohibiting employees from distributing materials of “a political or union nature” stated prima facie allegation of employer interference with protected employee and organizational rights by making impermissible content-based restriction. Because the degree of intrusion into an employer’s property or managerial interests does not vary with the content of the material distributed, an employer’s only legitimate interest in regulating such conduct is in preventing employees from bringing literature onto its premises and distributing it there — not in choosing which messages to condone or suppress. In addition to non-work areas, once the employer has opened up other parts of the workplace as a forum for some forms of non-work related speech or expressive conduct, it is generally not free to ban other non-disruptive speech or conduct based solely on its content.