'You Can't Fire Me. I've Got Rights!'

I am a management-side labor and employment lawyer. That means I actually defend those scalawags accused of sexually harassing their employees, discriminating against them on the basis of race or age, or refusing to employ them because of their disabilities. Note that I am careful to draw a few distinctions here: I sure don't defend any of those actions. I defend those who have been accused of them - falsely accused, in the overwhelming majority of cases.

Congress has become a super-personal department, cranking out laws that offer greater and greater employee protections for smaller and smaller offenses. I oppose these trends. It's laws like these, and lawsuits like the ones I've described, that keep me in business. But there's a difference between what's good on a personal level and what's good for the country. Our society is too litigious. Period.

You don't have a right to compensation if your boss looks at you "funny," and you don't have a "right" to a job just because you are a certain sex or race. And I'm real sorry about your disability, but if you can't do the job, I don't want to hire you. In my dream world, no company takes advantage of its employees . . . And no employees take advantage of their employers.

This article appeared in the July 2008 issue of The Mensa Bulletin.