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Hiring and firing on Capitol Hill

Eugene Volokh posts today about the Washingtonienne firing incident (but he doesn’t name Jessica Cutler, even though the Washington Post had no problem doing so).

Mr. Volokh writes about the First Amendment issues involved in firing a government employee, and he says that includes people working for Senators. Volokh goes into a lot of detail; I highly recommend taking a look at his entire post. A brief quote follows:

So according to Volokh, the following imaginary dialog

would be a perfectly acceptable reason to fire someone. Outside of government, an employee at will can be fired for any reason an employer wants, so long as it’s not a reason that is specifically prohibited. I get the impression that the legal standard for Senators is not very much stricter than that.

Let’s look at the official press release (Via Wonkette) announcing Jessica Cutler’s firing:

The first thing I observe is that this is a pretty cowardly press release. We know that the real reason that Jessica was fired is because she’s a slut, and Senators don’t want the voters back home to know that they have sluts on their staff. (Read my previous post, Jessica Cutler and the values of Washington.)

But the official press release doesn’t say anywhere that she was fired for being a slut. Three reason are given: (1) “unacceptable use of Senate computers”; (2) “to post unsuitable and offensive material to an Internet Weblog”; and (3) “Other inappropriate material was found in the employee’s work area as well.”

It seems to me as if Senator DeWine was thinking, “Boy, I’m sure glad that she was stupid enough to do this at the office so we had a good excuse to fire her. This would have looked bad for us if she did it all from home.” If a Capitol Hill employee, on her own free time, kept a blog about her sex life, a sex life which didn’t obviously include someone else working in the same office (I’m sure everyone in her office immediately figured out the identity of RS aka Robert Steinbuch), would it have been a violation of her First Amendment rights to fire her? There probably would have been enough of a gray area to encourage a publicity seeking attorney to take the case for free.

One is, of course, tantalized by what this “other inappropriate material . . . in the employee’s work area” might be. Given the nature of Jessica’s blog, the obvious guess is that they are objects of a kinky sexual nature.

* * *

Ricky Vandal of the I Love Jenna Bush blog (he’s really on top of this story) posted a link to a Google cache from a page at American University about Senate internships. Matt Doyle is listed as the contact for Joseph Lieberman’s office.

Jessica cutler wrote the following about Matt Doyle in her blog:

Elsewhere she wrote:

Apparently this guy spends all of his free time trying to get some from female interns and staff assistants.

Isn’t there something wrong when the person in charge of hiring interns (Matt Doyle) then has sex with the interns he hired? Was there a quid pro quo? Should Joseph Lieberman, who claims to be an orthodox Jew (although he was excommunicated ), tolerate this kind of behavior on the part of his staff? Doesn’t this smell unkosher? Shouldn’t Matt Doyle be fired for his scandalous behavior?

Going back to the topic of Senate internships, American University has the following to say about the position:

That sure is a lot of work to go through for a job that’s unpaid. Who can afford to work for free in an expensive city like Washington? Only people with rich parents. Or maybe girls who are willing to exchange sex for money. It’s unfortunate that middle-class kids who don’t wish to prostitute themselves are prevented from working at these jobs.

posted Monday, May 24, 2004