The meteoric rise of social media has brought to the forefront issues of employee privacy and the rights of an employer to discipline its employees and manage its workforce. When does a private Facebook rant to hundreds of “friends” become legitimate justification to discipline an employee? A recent District of New Jersey case provides some clarification of what is public versus private under federal law.
In Ehling v. Monmouth-Ocean Hospital Service Corp., Civ. No. 2:11-cv-03305, 2013 WL 4436539 (D.N.J. Aug. 20, 2013), the plaintiff, a registered nurse and paramedic for the Monmouth-Ocean Hospital Service Corp. (MONOC), maintained a Facebook account and had approximately 300 Facebook friends. Although she did not add any MONOC managers, she did add many of her colleagues as Facebook friends. The plaintiff selected privacy settings for her account that limited access to her Facebook wall postings only to her Facebook friends.
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