“What kind of person signs up for an antigovernment militia with a government-issued email address? The answer is surprising, revealing — and, as one extremism expert puts it, ‘really alarming,’” begins a Rolling Stone magazine article published on Monday, October 26, 2021. (Read it here.)
Combing through a leaked Oath Keepers membership list, Rolling Stone identified “nearly 40 memberships linked to public-sector work emails, from domains like nasa.gov, dmv.virginia.gov, and city.pittsburgh.pa.us.” and then matched these email accounts to specific public employees using “public-source information” such as government websites. The magazine declined to publicly name most of them, and only described the jobs they hold.
They include “more than a handful of law enforcement officers … employees of the Treasury Department, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Veterans Administration, as well as local government workers ranging from fire fighters to auto mechanics to public school employees.” The names include “current and former firefighters from Seattle.” (Note: Seattle also had more cops at the Capitol riot — six– than any other police department.)
Each membership should be independently investigated, to determine whether the employees ended up on the Oath Keepers rolls inadvertently, or knowingly used their government email to join and participate. The rest of this posting addresses the latter.
It’s a no-brainer that allowing members of a violent anti-government militia group to hold government jobs is highly problematical. Except for elected officials like sheriffs, no pretext is needed to remove them; using government emails and facilities for political activity is prohibited by the federal Hatch Act and comparable state laws, and violating those prohibitions is a firing offense.
Public employees are, or should be, brief on this when they’re hired. They know better.
Fire them (or, in government parlance, “separate” them).
Photo: This person, whoever he is, has no business being a cop, firefighter, or other government worker. Except for the military, public employers generally can’t condition employment on not joining certain groups or participating in political activity in their off-hours. But public employees can be fired for using government emails and facilities to engage in such activities.
Going down this road always opens up cans of worms. Remember once upon a time when just being a Communist and especially a member of the party could get one kicked out of government jobs. Once upon a time there were members of the Black Panthers who held government jobs. Members of Antifa and Black Lives Matter hold government jobs.
While arguable there maybe a black list of organizations at the Federal and State levels generally these types of organizations keep their memberships secret and can do so because of Supreme Court rulings. Just being a militia does not cut it as that 2nd amendment mentions militias,but does not define it well and Federal and State law is rather fuzzy on the matter.
There also could be cases where an investigation was going on, someone else tried or signed up someone as a member, someone thought this was some oath keeper thing with their church, ect.
There is always a little wiggle room on government use of computers. Most policies do allow employees to do a few personal things on their accounts and it varies by entity. Also one would have to define what exactly is political activity and being on the rolls or asking for or even filling out a membership may not count, as does being present at a rally. The Federal Hatch act is probably unconstitutional, though it means well.
When this kind of thing is used to attack enemies eventually the tactics will allow attacks on your allies or even yourself. It may be best to keep the worms in the can.
I didn’t say they should be fired because of their political beliefs. They should be fired for violating the statutory prohibition on using government resources for private political activity, which is different. That prohibition applies to all public employees, regardless of political sympathies. As a citizen and taxpayer, you should be outraged that your tax dollars were used for political activity you disagree with. Of course, you probably wouldn’t feel strongly about this misuse of public resources if you sympathized with the Oath Keepers. But other people don’t want their taxes used to support the rightwing militia violence that occurred on January 6. The Hatch Act also prohibits federal employees from holding membership in any political organization that advocates the overthrow of our constitutional form of government, and Oath Keepers arguably falls in that category.