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The aftershocks of George Floyds death are still reverberating for Home Depot. Godofredo A. Vsquez-Pool/Getty Images

by Michael Z. Green, Texas A&M University

A Home Depot store violated labor law when it disciplined Antonio Morales, the National Labor Relations Board ruled on Feb. 21, 2024.

Morales, a Home Depot employee in the Minneapolis area, had drawn the letters BLM on a work apron and refused to remove them. BLM stands for the Black Lives Matter movement, which campaigns against violence and systemic racism aimed at Black people. Morales ultimately quit because of pressure to end the use of BLM messaging.

The NLRB has now ordered Home Depot to rehire Morales based on the legal right U.S. employees have to engage in concerted activity for the purpose of mutual aid or protection.

As a legal scholar who has studied issues of race in the workplace for more than 20 years, I believe the Home Depot decision establishes an important precedent for workers who express broad concerns about systemic racism.

This decision indicates that employees have a right to demonstrate their support for the Black Lives Matter movement on the job if they are seeking to improve their own working conditions with respect to racial discrimination. And this right persists even if the messaging arguably has political connotations that some workers or customers might disagree with.

The National Labor Relations Board is the federal agency that conducts elections when employees seek to be represented by a union. It also prosecutes and adjudicates complaints filed against employers and unions based upon unfair labor practices as defined by the National Labor Relations Act.

Workers have the right to display slogans related to working conditions when theyre on the job under Section 7 of that law, which was enacted in 1935. Section 7 protects the rights of employees to wear and distribute items such as buttons, pins, stickers, t-shirts, flyers, or other items displaying a message relating to terms and conditions of employment, unionization, and other protected matters.

In this Home Depot case, the NLRB reviewed a preliminary decision issued in 2022 by Paul Bogas, an NLRB administrative law judge. Bogas found that Home Depots ban on manifestations of support for the Black Lives Matter movement didnt violate labor law.

The NLRB disagreed with the decision by Bogas in a 3-1 decision that cited a 1978 Supreme Court precedent.

In that case, Eastex Inc. v. National Labor Relations Board, the court found that workers distributing materials related to their terms and conditions of employment are protected by Section 7 when there is a reasonable and direct connection to the advancement of mutual aid and protection in the workplace.

That ruling held that this protection exists even when political messages may be involved in the workers communications. Moreover, what may be viewed as political in one context can be viewed quite differently in another, the Supreme Court held.

At the Home Depot in question, Morales and other employees had previously discussed concerns about racial misconduct by a supervisor and two separate incidents of destroying a display of Black History Month materials the workers had created to celebrate Black culture.

Employees had a right to express their support for BLM messaging in the workplace because they had already objected to working conditions based upon racial concerns, the NLRBs majority ruled.

One of the NLRBs four members, Marvin Kaplan, based on his different view about the purpose of Morales display of the BLM messaging. Morales was expressing support for the Black Lives Matter movements goal of combating police violence against Black individuals not with improving terms and conditions of employment, Kaplan wrote.

Morales show of support for the Black Lives Matter movement in the workplace was hardly an outlier.

Many Black Americans began to speak out about racism and discrimination by discussing BLM in their workplaces amid the widespread protests that followed George Floyds murder by police officers on May 25, 2020, in Minneapolis.

A year after Floyd was killed, a poll found that 68% of Americans thought that employees should be able to discuss racial justice issues at work.

Employees who wanted to show their support for BLM at work have in recent years met resistance from other employers besides Home Depot, including the Publix and Fred Meyer supermarket chains.

Some companies have said their bans on workers displaying BLM insignia were intended to prevent disruptive responses by other workers and customers who may not agree with the movements message.

Legal decisions about this issue have been mixed so far.

A court found that a Pennsylvania government agency violated the First Amendment when it prohibited workers from wearing face masks emblazoned with BLM messaging during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But Whole Foods has prevailed against workers in similar cases. An NLRB administrative law judge found that its employees had worn BLM insignia merely as a political statement unrelated to their working conditions.

That preliminary decision is now in question after the NLRBs final ruling about the same issue in the Home Depot dispute.

Whole Foods workers asserted in a separate legal challenge that their employers ban on wearing BLM insignia represented racial discrimination under federal law. In that case, the court found that the employees had failed to prove that the ban had a racial motivation.

Whole Foods was instead seeking to stop expression of a politically charged and controversial message by employees in its stores, according to the court.

One interesting aspect of these cases is the apparent contradictions involved.

After Floyds death, many big companies proclaimed their commitment to fight racism and promised to do a better job of supporting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

Home Depot, for example, expressed its anguish over the senseless killing of George Floyd and other unarmed Black men and women in our country. The company explained how it had established worker programs to facilitate internal town halls to share experiences and create better understanding.

Amazon, which owns Whole Foods, made a similar statement, along with a pledge to donate US$10 million to organizations that are working to bring about social justice and improve the lives of Black and African Americans.

To be sure, this NLRB decision isnt the final word on this issue, because Home Depot has filed an appeal.

Regardless of how the courts respond, the NLRBs decision is historic. The labor panel has established that a workers support for Black Lives Matter in the workplace isnt merely an expression of their political beliefs.

Michael Z. Green, Professor of Law and Director, Workplace Law Program, Texas A&M University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Employees have a right to express support for Black Lives Matter while they're on the job, according to a historic labor ... - New Pittsburgh Courier

The Advanced Placement (AP) Program, run by the non-profit organizationThe College Board, has issued itsfinal 20242025school year guidelines. The AP African American Studies course has been hotly debated since Florida Governor. and fading candidate for the Republican nominee for President injected himself and decided the previous version would not be taught in Florida because it didnt align with his desires.

In the final version, the AP course makes the teaching of the Black Lives Matter movement optional. At the same time, mandatory learning includes NFL players taking a knee on the sidelines during the National Anthem.Which of these two has had the most impact on American history?The issue of reparations has also been made optional.Both Black Lives Matter and reparations were initially considered Essential Knowledge by the College Board but became optional after pressure from DeSantis and other politicians.

The State of Florida had previously issued its Social Studies Guidelines, including Black History. To its credit, theFlorida guidelinesare surprisingly comprehensive, covering a wide range of topics and individuals yet promoting a theme that makes white people look better and highlighting the activities of white abolitionists, who are the storys heroes.My biggest objection was the repeated reference to natural reproduction, which explains away the fantastic increase in the number of domestic-bred enslaved people instead of properly attributing it to forced breeding and rape.

The public debate between DeSantis and The College Board seemed to presume that the AP Program was proposing a complete and accurate version of Black History while DeSantis wished to gut the program. The new AP version is as disingenuous as was Florida when discussing whatsome historiansrefer to as natural increase and what Florida calls natural reproduction. Heres the only mention of this in the AP guidelines.

Even after the 1808 ban against importing enslaved Africans, the number of enslaved Africans in the United States increased steadily throughout the nineteenth century as children of enslaved people were born into enslavement themselves, such that 4 million Africans remained enslaved in the United States about 50 percent of all enslaved people in the Americas by the time of the Emancipation Proclamation.

The AP program mentions the word rape twice, whereas Florida doesnt mention rape at all. The AP says that some slave women were raped during the Mid-Atlantic Passage and that there were no laws against rape of enslaved women in the country.

Aboard slave ships, Africans were humiliated, beaten, tortured, and raped, and they suffered from widespread disease and malnourishment. About 15 percent of captive Africans perished during the Middle Passage.

Laws against rape did not apply to enslaved African American women.

What both Florida and The College Board are unwilling to say out loud is that not only was a significant foundation of America built on the backs of enslaved people.Americas labor force was increased by forced breeding and rape.Thomas Jefferson ended the International Slave Trade in 1807 as a protectionist measure to increase the value of domestic-bred slaves. Jefferson wrote George Washington explaining that a Black woman having a child every two years was of greater value than any field hand and would increase profits by 4%.

Ill be reviewing the entire 294-page AP Guidelines to see what else they say (and omit) about Black history. Assuming they got it right might have given them too much credit.

This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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AP Black History Program Makes Discussing Black Lives Matter Optional and Won't Mention Rape - The Good Men Project

Artists and volunteers work on a mural that reads Black Lives Matter on Hamilton Avenue in front of Palo Alto City Hall on June 30, 2020. Each artist was assigned one letter in the mural to paint in their own style. Photo by Magali Gauthier.

Seeking to avoid a summer trial, Palo Alto is asking the courts for a quick ruling on a lawsuit from a group of police officers who claim they were offended by a Black Lives Matter mural that 16 artists painted in front of City Hall in June 2020.

The citys attorney, Suzanne Solomon from the firm Liebert Cassidy Whitmore, filed a motion on Feb. 28 requesting that the Santa Clara County Superior Court issue a summary judgment in May, a ruling that would obviate the need for a two-week trial that is currently scheduled for June 10.

She has asked the court to schedule a hearing on the request on May 28. If the court opts to move ahead with the trial, Solomon has asked that the trial be postponed until June 28 to comply with a 30-day requirement for summary judgments.

The City Council is scheduled to discuss the latest developments in the case in a March 11 closed session.

The six officers Eric Figueroa, Michael Foley, Robert Parham, Julie Tannock, Christopher Moore and David Ferreira filed their lawsuit in July 2021, about a year after the city commissioned artists to paint the mural along Hamilton Avenue, between Ramona and Bryant Streets.

Each of the 16 artists (or, in some cases, artist teams) was commissioned to paint a single letter of BLACK LIVES MATTER. The city removed the mural in the first week of November 2020 with the goal of eventually creating a more permanent art installation.

The mural was part of the citys effort to address nationwide calls for social justice in after George Floyd was murdered by a Minnesota police officer on May 25, 2020. While the mural was only up for about four months, the litigation stemming from the artwork has been winding its way through the legal system for three years. The plaintiffs have maintained that the mural represented a form of harassment. They specifically objected to two images, which are contained in the letters E and R of MATTER.

The E featured Assata Shakur, a civil rights activist and member of the Black Liberation Army who became a fugitive after she was convicted in 1977 of killing a New Jersey state trooper. The R included an image of a black panther, an emblem of the Black Panther Party. In their lawsuit, the police officers claimed the image alludes to the New Black Panther, an antisemitic organization that has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and that has been disavowed by the original Black Panthers.

In March 2022, the Santa Clara County Superior Court rejected an argument from the officers that the citys failure to immediately remove the images constituted workplace discrimination. Judge Socrates Manoukian also found no evidence that the city had engaged in discriminatory conduct or that its failure to remove the mural had anything to do with the officers race, ethnicity or some other protected classification.

But in July of that year, Manoukian rejected the citys position that the officers claim does not state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action and allowed the case to move forward.

It is not difficult for this court to conclude that by allowing the mural to be posted in its current location, a reasonable jury could conclude that the behavior by the City was outrageous because it abused its relationship with its valuable employees, should have suspected that the plaintiffs were susceptible to injuries through mental distress; or that the city acted intentionally or unreasonably with the recognition that the act would be likely to result in illness through mental distress, Manoukian wrote in the July 5, 2022, ruling.

The citys latest filing seeks to expedite the resolution of the case by requesting a summary judgment on the officers only remaining cause of action: the allegation that the citys decision to keep the mural constitutes harassment that violates the Fair Employment and Housing Act.

In making the argument, Solomon disputed the notion that the mural is objectively offensive.

No reasonable person would have considered public speech on a sidewalk during the summer of 2020, when the entire Country was focused on its history of racial injustice, to be hostility directed toward them personally because they are not African-American, Solomon wrote in her brief. In any event, they were reassured by the City Manager that the City valued their dedication and hard work, and that the City was not endorsing Ms. Shakurs past acts.

She noted that the mural posed no actual physical threat and did not urge anyone to take any action in relation to Plaintiffs due to their races. In fact, the only words in the letter E were, WE MUST LOVE EACH OTHER AND SUPPORT EACH OTHER.

Solomon argued in her new motion that the city is entitled to legislative immunity for all claims relating to the mural because the artwork was made in response to a City Council enactment. She also argued that the city could not have altered the mural without violating the artists First Amendment rights.

She dismissed as false the assertion by the officers that the panther in the R references the New Black Panther Party and argued that it in fact alludes to the original Black Panther Party, which is not a hate group. One of the artists who had painted the letter had similarly told this publication shortly after the lawsuit was filed that he was inspired by the Black Panther Party.

Solomon also took issue with the idea that the Shakur painting somehow discriminates against the officers because of their races. The officers identify as Caucasian, Filipino, Asian and Hispanic, according to the filing.

Plaintiffs attempt to recast their offense as being race-based because the police officer Ms. Shakur was convicted of killing was Caucasian, the Solomon motion states. Plaintiffs believe that the murder was race-based, but their unsupported belief does not transform the message of the letter E, which is racially neutral and urges love and support, presumably for everyone.

She also noted that while the plaintiffs see Shakur primarily as a killer, others see her as a civil rights icon. Cece Carpio, the Oakland-based artist who painted the E, explained her decision to paint Shakur in an email to the city shortly after the officers demanded that the letter be removed.She wrote that she felt it was important to represent the words and wisdom of Assata, who has been a political refugee since 1979.

Assata was a target of policing and COINTELPRO, and is still a target of the policing and the US government, Carpio wrote, referring to the surveillance program of political organizations that the FBI conducted between 1956 and 1971. They see her involvement with the Black liberation movement as a threat to the status quo. Just as they see the movement to defend Black lives as a threat to racial capitalism and white supremacy.

But some in the Police Department saw things differently. Anthony Becker, former president of the Palo Alto Police Officers Association, wrote several emails to City Manager Ed Shikada in July 2020 asking that the mural be removed. The exchanges between Becker and Shikada are included in the exhibits that Solomon had submitted as part of her request for a summary judgment.

The men and women of the PAPOA deserve better, Becker wrote. This portion of the mural is intimating (sic), threatening and promotes violence. To allow such an image to be displayed takes away from the message of the mural.

Shikada responded by noting that the art in the mural was based on a selection process managed by the citys Public Art Commission, a process designed to prevent politicians and bureaucrats from making design decisions.

This is a wise rule, Shikada wrote. As a consequence, however, we open the door to diverse perspectives like the mural. Some have called it brilliant and beautiful, while others have called it idiocy and an insult. Personally, I call it art something I perceive in my own way while understanding that others may see it differently.

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City seeks to avoid trial over Black Lives Matter mural - Palo Alto Online

The NLRB has issued a decision inHome Depot USA, Inc.,holding that an employer violated the National Labor Relations Act when it discharged an employee for refusing to remove the hand-drawn letters BLM the acronym for Black Lives Matter from their work apron.

Several other employees at the same Home Depot store also displayed BLM markings on their work aprons at about the same time.

The National Labor Relations Act protects the legal right of employees to engage in concerted activities for the purpose of mutual aid or protection, regardless of whether they are represented by a union.

The Board applied existing precedent and said that the employees refusal to remove the BLM marking was concerted because it was a logical outgrowth of prior concerted employee protests about racial discrimination in their workplace and an attempt to bring those group complaints to the attention of Home Depot managers.

The employees conduct was also for mutual aid or protection because the issue of racial discrimination involved employees working conditions, the Board found.

Further, the Board said that an employers interference with its employees right to display protected insignia, such as the BLM marking, was presumptively unlawful, and that the employer had the burden of establishing special circumstances making a rule about insignias necessary to maintain production or discipline.

The Board found that Home Depot failed to establish such special circumstances in this case. Therefore, the Board held that the company broke the law when it conditioned the employees continued employment on removal of the BLM marking.

It is well-established that workers have the right to join together to improve their working conditions including by protesting racial discrimination in the workplace, said Chairman Lauren McFerran. It is equally clear that an employee who acts individually to support a group protest regarding a workplace issue remains protected under the law.

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NLRB: 'Black Lives Matter' insignia allowed New England Biz Law Update - New England Biz Law Update

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While many Black and white parents spoke to their children about the Black Lives Matter movement within a year of the 2020 murder of George Floyd, they used different language to explain it, according to new research.

As reported in Developmental Psychology, 84% of Black parents and 76% of white parents talked about Black Lives Matter (BLM) to their 8- to 11-year-old children. While 78% of Black parents affirmed Black lives and acknowledged systemic racism, only 35% of white parents reported similar messaging.

The study was prompted by the widespread calls in 2020 for national conversations on race that included children, as highlighted in a Sesame Street Town Hall. The researchers wanted to learn what parents were saying to their children during this sociopolitical moment of upheaval.

Parents are experiencing the stresses and us versus them divisions in society, but what are they telling their kids about this? says coauthor Andrew Meltzoff, professor of psychology at the University of Washington and co-director of the UW Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences.

The researchers collected data for the study via online surveys between November 2020 and January 2021 from more than 700 socio-economically diverse parents of children aged 8-11. Study participants were evenly divided between Black and white parents. Respondents were asked whether they had spoken to their children about BLM, and, if so, were then asked what they had told their child. Open-ended question responses were then coded and categorized by the research team.

While it is notable that many parents, including white parents, were talking with their children about Black Lives Matter, it is more important to consider what parents said, says lead author Leoandra Onnie Rogers, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University and principal director of the DICE lab.

Rogers, who did her postdoctoral fellowship with Meltzoff at the University of Washington and later became a research assistant professor before being hired at Northwestern, says the responses showed not all yes responses were substantive, and importantly, the conversational approaches varied by race.

Black parents were more likely to acknowledge inequalityshown through responses like: I talk with my son about the wrongful deaths of men and women of color at the hands of policeand affirm Black lives with messages such as: I try to remind him that he is important and worthy despite what the media tells us.

White parents who gave substantive responses were more likely to communicate very general messages about equality without pointing to existing injustices, such as: All lives matter no matter your skin color.

The research team also noted a pattern of verbatim responses copied from the internet. This type of response was mostly used by white parents14% vs. 1% of Black parentswho had answered the survey with apparent credibility but could not or did not actually report their own thoughts when talking about BLM. In fact, 27% of white parents provided uncodeable responses, which included nonsensical comments or content copied and pasted word-for-word from internet sources.

Encouraging parents to talk about race, to break the silence, is necessary but insufficient, Rogers says. The upside is these data suggest that parents are listening to the societal conversation, and the concerted effort to engage parents and families in race talk did seem to influence the overall frequency of the reported conversations. However, the depth and substance of these conversations warrants further attention.

Parents wonder when its appropriate to talk with their children about race and whats the most helpful thing to say, says Meltzoff. We looked at the strategies taken by hundreds of parents across the country. Parents can teach us a lot about how to have conversations about racenot only with children but among ourselves.

Additional coauthors are from Tulane University, Wake Forest University, and Northwestern University.

Source: Lauren Kirschman for University of Washington

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How parents talked with kids about Black Lives Matter differed by race - Futurity: Research News