{"id":11645,"date":"2010-09-27T18:24:39","date_gmt":"2010-09-27T23:24:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=11645"},"modified":"2010-09-28T14:24:57","modified_gmt":"2010-09-28T19:24:57","slug":"craiglist-adult-services-proponent-fired-by-school-district","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2010\/09\/craiglist-adult-services-proponent-fired-by-school-district\/","title":{"rendered":"Craigslist “Adult Services” Proponent Fired by School District"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sch_building\"<\/a> Interesting education and employment law story in the New York Times<\/a> brought to my attention by one of my employment law students:<\/p>\n

A teacher at a Bronx elementary school has been reassigned after writing on a Web site about her past as a sex worker.<\/p>\n

In a short online article in The Huffington Post<\/a> on Sept. 7, the teacher, Melissa Petro, criticized Craigslist<\/a> for shutting down its \u201cadult services\u201d section, which carried sex-related advertising.<\/p>\n

Ms. Petro wrote that from October 2006 to January 2007, she \u201caccepted money in exchange for sexual services I provided to men I met online.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said that she used Craigslist to meet men and it provided \u201ca simple, familiar forum through which I could do my business with complete anonymity, from the safety and convenience of my own home.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a fairly standard public employee free speech case applying the Pickering<\/em> framework, probably coming down to whether the online article in question substantially disrupted the teacher’s ability to be an effective teacher in the school (by dint of her relationship with her supervisors, colleagues, parents, or students). When you are talking about elementary school, you also have to consider concerns about good role models and the impressionable age of the children.<\/p>\n

The interesting part to me and my student was the tenure part. Most tenure protections at the K-12 level provide some type of statutory just cause protection.\u00a0 Did the school district have good cause to terminate her based on exposing herself (pun intended) as a former prostitute?\u00a0 Who knows how an arbitrator might rule, but I think good cause could be found.\u00a0 So as long as the school district here affords the proper procedural protections a la Roth<\/em> and Sindermann<\/em>, I do not see a problem with the school district’s actions.<\/p>\n

Do I condone the firing personally?\u00a0 That’s a hard one, especially since I have children currently in elementary school.\u00a0 I can’t imagine her past occupation coming up in the classroom or the children finding out (unless a parent shares this information with their children), but really who knows?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interesting education and employment law story in the New York Times brought to my attention by one of my employment law students: A teacher at a Bronx elementary school has been reassigned after writing on a Web site about her past as a sex worker. In a short online article in The Huffington Post on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-law","category-labor-employment-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11645\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}