Court case on whether employers can demand ‘ideological conformity’ reopened

The fight is over whether employers can demand “ideological conformity” from employees, and an appeals court in Minnesota has just given it a jump-start.

Just the News reports that’s the fight in a court case brought by a Filipina-American doctor with black children who charges a Minneapolis public hospital attacked her, and dismissed her.

The reason alleged? She criticized Black Lives Matter and critical race theory, called COVID-19 the “China virus” and said the protests following George Floyd’s death, which inflicted billions of dollars of damage across America, were “riots.”

It is the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that unanimously revived the case brought by Tara Gustilo after a lower court judge had incorrectly tossed it out.

The fight is with the Hennepin Healthcare System, and focuses on the First Amendment.

“The three-judge panel faulted U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson for usurping a jury by determining the HHS board approved Gustilo’s removal as OB-GYN department chair without also adopting the Medical Executive Committee’s basis for removing her: Gustilo’s Facebook posts on BLM, CRT and COVID among other subjects,” the report explained.

Nelson is a Barack Obama appointee, and failed to determine the “threshold question” in the case, whether the posts were protected by the First Amendment.

The appeals court decision now also will allow Gustilo to resume her complaints about illegal race discrimination and retaliation.

Gustilo’s lawyer, Daniel Cragg, said in the report that the case will result in a determination of “the boundaries of free speech in professional settings and the consequences of challenging institutional ideologies.”

The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism is funding the case, and the Upper Midwest Law Center is contributing to the representation.

The employer had not had problems with Gustilo, educated at Harvard, and she “created a program to reflect cultural differences in birthing practices to better serve her diverse patients,” the report said. Then she revealed her opinions about race and more.

The opinion said, “Before 2020, [Gustilo] received generally positive performance reviews.”

But her opinions, on social media, caused clashes with coworkers.

She challenged the board with a question about continuing discussions about systemic racism, because that “ended in the ’60s,” after which the board adopted an “equity” scheme to oppose “systemic racism.”

Coworkers complained they feelings were hurt, by being bullied.

Officials then turned negative in their reviews of her work, and she was put on leave based on information that included her personal opinions on social media, prompting the fight over First Amendment speech rights.

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