> Calling your climate change denying coworker a backwards dumb-ass is not illegal. You can of course be fired for that inappropriate behavior, but it isn't illegal.

A correct statement, but one that skirts around the issue at hand: in this situation the people berating their evangelical coworker are creating a hostile workplace environment and the company is obligated to take actions to remidiate this situation. If the climate denier points out this hostile workplace behavior, they're not censoring any particular view. Only the hostile actions of their co-worker.

While Weiss' high profile position makes it much more likely to receive public scrutiny, she is indeed entitled to the same workplace protections as a mid level software developer. Working as a columnist doesn't absolve a company of their legal responsibility to curb workplace harassment. Your workplace is a captive audience. What is legal for some random person to say to you is not at all the same standard that is applied to co-workers. Weiss calling this behavior out as discrimination is not calling any particular belief illegal, only the treatment towards her by her coworkers.

A hostile work environment requires discrimination. She is not being discriminated against. Having smart and well supported opinions is part of the requirements of her job. Therefore her opinions are subject to extra scrutiny compared to the opinions of someone who is asked to do an entirely different job.

No, a hostile work environment does not require discrimination. A workplace that is entirely non-discriminatory but does nothing when one co-worker relentlessly bullies and harasses another co-worker is still a hostile workplace. You seem to be misled by the fact that anti-discrimination laws prohibit hostile workplaces, and that hostile workplaces are considered a form of discrimination, but there's no requirement that the hostility be discriminatory in nature. A co-worker harassing another co-worker without any particular discrimination is still harassment.

I can call a co-worker an idiot and a worthless human being relentlessly, all day long. That's not discriminatory in nature. I'm not referring to a protected class like gender, race, or religion. Does it follow that it isn't creating a hostile workplace?

https://www.eeoc.gov/harassment

From that page:

> Harassment is unwelcome conduct that is based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.

So, yes, for it to be a hostile workplace under the laws you're talking about, it would need to be based on one of those aspects, not just because people disagree with her opinions.

The article specifically calls out harassment on the basis of protected class. But to read this as saying that unwelcome conduct, so long as it is not on the basis of protected class, isn't harassment is not a correct interpretation.

A shape with four equal length sides is a quadrilateral. Does it mean that a shape with four sides of unequal lengths isn't quadrilateral?

Put this in a more concrete scenario. You have a co worker that stops by your desk every hour and says, "Joshua you are a worthless idiot and your team is worsened by your presence" and relentlessly bullies you throughout the day. Is this not harassment because it isn't based on a protected class like race or gender."

> Put this in a more concrete scenario. You have a co worker that stops by your desk every hour and says, "Joshua you are a worthless idiot and your team is worsened by your presence" and relentlessly bullies you throughout the day. Is this not harassment because it isn't based on a protected class like race or gender."

As I said on your other post, this would not be workplace harassment. It could possibly be criminal harassment, but that is also unlikely, since criminal harassment usually requires threats of violence.

Speech protections in the US are strong. I'm surprised people aren't just telling Weiss to "toughen up". Which to be clear isn't advice I'm giving her, and I empathize with her discomfort, but that is the advice given to people very often, so I'm curious as to the inconsistency here. Perhaps it's not as easy to tell someone to toughen up when you see yourself in them.

Did you read the page you linked? The very first sentence of the body of the page states:

>Harassment is a form of employment discrimination...

It goes on to say:

>Harassment is unwelcome conduct that is based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.

They are defining harassment as requiring the behavior to be based on a protected class and categorizing it as a subset of discrimination. Therefore if a hostile environment requires harassment, it inherently requires discrimination.

So if a coworker goes to your workplace every day and says, "Slg is an idiot and a worthless human being who makes the company worse with his or her presence" that's not harassment? Because it's not based on race, religion, sex, etc? The article particularly highlights harassment in the basis of protected class. It does not say that harassment on the basis of things other than protected class is permitted. If what you claim is true, then in the above scenario you would not be able to claim harassment with respect to a co-worker that constantly insults you.

And regardless even if harassment does require discrimination, Weiss has grounds to claim it on the basis of religion.

> Weiss has grounds to claim it on the basis of religion.

No she doesn't. The harassment isn't due to her religion, it's due to how she conducts herself as part of her job. (and it doesn't meet the line for harassment anyway, people expressing workplace disagreements isn't harassment, as much as she may want to dress it up).

> "Slg is an idiot and a worthless human being who makes the company worse with his or her presence" that's not harassment?

It could be criminal harassment (but even this is unlikely) it is not, however, workplace harassment. Speech protections in the united states are incredibly broad and protect many forms of assholery. This is not news to many people to have been subject to harassment that isn't legally harassment before.

So your answer is yes? Under your understanding of harassment, someone can relentlessly bully and insult their co-worker all day long and it isn't workplace harassment so long as it doesn't refer to protected class?

That is the legal definition, yes. I'm not making any statement about how I think things should be. I'm making commentary only on the current legal definitions in the US.

To elaborate, a workplace certainly could take action on such harassment, as they have the right to associate how they please. But they are also free to not do that. And in fact many people face workplace harassment every day, but have no recourse except to suck it up.

Personally, I absolutely support stronger protections for workers, but they don't exist today.

These words have specific legal meanings in specific contexts. What you are describing is technically bullying and not harassment. Bullying is often illegal, but it isn't regulated to the same degree on the federal level as harassment.

I have not seen a single instance of Weiss being targeted based on religion and Weiss provided zero examples in the body of her letter. Like Weiss, I am also Jewish. Criticizing a Jewish person's political opinions on the state of Israel is not inherently antisemitism. If you can point out a specific example of Weiss being targeted based on her religion, I would concede that I am wrong.

> Calling your climate change denying coworker a backwards dumb-ass is not illegal

Illegal is when you call the police. There's lots of behaviors that the employer is better to prevent before you have to call the police. If it rose to the level of illegal, there's a lot of things that already went wrong.

> Weiss specifically called out this behavior as unlawful discrimination.

If she was uniquely subjected to harassing and hostile behavior then it's discrimination, by definition. If that treatment is routine for anyone that dares to voice an unorthodox though in NYT, then it's not discrimination - it's just deeply sick and broken culture.

Discrimination is a legal word. She used the phrase "unlawful discrimination" which means she is using it in a legal context. Discrimination is not defined by being "subjected to harassing and hostile behavior" unless the reason for that behavior focuses on a protected class. There is nothing unlawful about treating her poorly based on her "unorthodox thoughts".

> There is nothing unlawful about treating her poorly based on her "unorthodox thoughts".

It could be that she is, not being a lawyer, wrong on the "unlawful" part (it's impossible to know without knowing the details and the NY anti-discrimination statutes and caselaw). So what? It's not an argument in a lawsuit, exact precision of all legal terms is not the most important thing here.

When your job is to communicate with the written word, I don't think it is unreasonable for you to be held to the literal interpretation of your words. As I said elsewhere in this thread, if she can't clearly communicate her actual beliefs and opinions through her writing, she is bad at her job.

In my opinion, it is unreasonable. If somebody comes out and says "I am being constantly harassed by my colleagues, this makes my life hell and I think it's also illegal" and you respond with "well, according to the legal precedent from 1925, Snowflake et al. vs Ontinence, Inc., making your life hell is not illegal unless they put a live rat into your drawer and it bit you, and since no evidence of rat bite has been presented, clearly the whole complaint is invalid" - that's not a reasonable way to treat this complaint. If you're a judge considering a motion to dismiss, sure, that's exactly what you'd do. But if you're a reasonable person reacting to a complaint that somebody's life is made hell, then no, the legal precedent of the Snowflake case is not the main thing you should reasonably discuss. You may be more worried about the "hell" part.