Assignment: A 23-year-old employee attends a weekend party at his friend\'s hous

Question

Assignment:

A 23-year-old employee attends a weekend party at his friend's house in Boulder, Colorado (where recreational use of marijuana is lawful). At this party, he smokes marijuana and a number of pictures from the party are posted to his Facebook account. His employer sees the pictures from his Facebook account after another employee who is "friends" with him online shows the photos to his supervisor.

The employer does not have a specific drug use policy but he is immediately terminated nonetheless.

Can the employee bring suit against the employer for wrongful termination? What about a tort claim for intrusion upon seclusion or other "invasion of privacy" remedy?

Explanation / Answer

The employer cannot terminate the employee since,
1. He smoked marijuana in a state where the use of recreational marijuana is legal also, the facebook photographs do not provide a firm evidence of him in taking marijuana. the employer does not have any drug policy which makes no sense when he terminates the employee on the basis of facebook pictures. Since the employer claims that the employee smoked marijuana, he cannot terminate him just on the basis of photographs. He could have terminated the employee had he be having a drug policy that so he can take action on the employee only after the drug test has taken place but not before that.

2. Since the employee has posted the pictures of the party on his Facebook profile, then when his counterpart who showed the photos to the employer who also is a friend with the employee on Facebook would not violate any privacy rules since posting online on one's profile is not a private data for any of the online friends of the employee. If the employer is also a friend with the employee on the facebook then there is no violation of the privacy codes. If the employer is not a friend on facebook with the employee then there might be any privacy rules which are set to be broke.
Ultimately employee can file a suit against the employer on the account of termination from his job.

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