In A Just Society: All People Are Free To Be Fired Or To Quit At Will
Posted by Mark Horne
The Iowa Supreme Court is reconsidering its earlier ruling allowing a woman to quit her job as a dental assistant without notice because she and her husband felt her relationship with her boss was a threat to their marriage. The dentist sued her for wrongful termination as an employer, saying that his business was hurt as he was suddenly forced to try to find a replacement. She had valuable experience working in his business that no one else had. The court is now asking to re-hear the case to award the dentist damages or force his former assistant to come back and work for him.
Just kidding.
The case involved a dentist, James Knight, who no longer wanted to employ his dental assistant of ten years, Melissa Nelson. His wife found they were exchanging messages and believed Nelson was a threat to their marriage. Knight agreed to fire her. The court backed him up. Nelson’s lawyer claimed the judges “failed to recognize the discrimination that women see routinely in the workplace.” But the dentist hires many females and replaced the woman he fired with another woman. Nevertheless, the court is reconsidering the case.
The Fox News story mentions the “all-male” makeup of the court as if that proves that they are incapable of rendering a just verdict. Testosterone is just brain poison, it seems.
Employment by a certain person is not a right. Your need for a job does not make the employer your slave. People have the natural right, no matter how much Federal and state tyrannies interfere, to choose whom they employ. If they make capricious and stupid decisions this will cost them. Those who choose the best workers and hire and fire according to real business needs will tend to beat out those who cannot show that sort of self discipline. This should have nothing to do with a civil judge.
The basic message of this story is that no one is permitted to be free. No one owns their business. They are just functionaries accountable to a network of tax-feeders for every business decision that they make.
That being said, the behavior described in the court case makes me wonder why Nelson didn’t sue Knight for sexual harassment—a real crime that needs to be dealt with severely.
“Nelson, 32, worked for Knight for 10 years, and he considered her a stellar worker. But in the final months of her employment, he complained that her tight clothing was distracting, once telling her that if his pants were bulging that was a sign her clothes were too revealing, according to the opinion. He also once allegedly remarked about her infrequent sex life by saying, ‘that’s like having a Lamborghini in the garage and never driving it.’”
If Knight were my family’s dentist, I would take my business elsewhere. He sounds like a goat. I suppose, according to the rules of omni-court accountability, Knight should then be able to sue me for firing him as my dentist on wrongful grounds since he was never actually convicted of sexual harassment.
