People have no idea how disruptive to the workplace it would be to give employees a roving right to sue for any termination that could not be justified as being "for cause" (which is apparently what the author of this piece is pushing for).

The issue is not so much a formalistic legal issue as it is a people issue. While most people are good and decent, a minority are not - they will cause trouble for the company, for co-workers, for customers, etc. They are just bad hires who must be let go and there will inevitably be some significant number of these involved in any range of hires.

In at-will employment situations, the remedy for an employer for a bad hire is simple. You let them go. No questions asked. No legal difficulties. Even if the employee falls within a "protected category," it is still easy early on to make a judgment and act on it without adverse consequences.

If the law were to require, as a default (and as suggested in this piece), that an employer have "cause" to do such routine firings, then every employment decision of this type would be the potential subject of a lawsuit unless an employer is prepared to show "cause" through some documented evidence. Such an environment only empowers lawyers who will come in and second-guess the entrepreneurs to no end, all the while suing them for potentially significant damages for an almost infinite number of reasons ("he didn't like my bumper sticker," "he didn't like my perfume," or "my looks" or who knows what). Yes, employers can still act to get rid of bad employees. But the cost of doing this would go up substantially.

What is in danger here is private associational rights. Today, of course, everyone agrees that such rights are not absolute. If an employer discriminates against employees based on some illegitimate criterion (race, color, creed, etc.), all would concur that this is not something that should be protected by an absolute concept of private associational rights. Beyond the illegitimate bases, however, the right to associate with those you like, and not to associate with others you don't like, is such an integral part of small business life that we don't even think of it consciously in the workforce. If this rule is undercut, then all private workplace settings will become like union shops, or like government settings, where it becomes basically a terrifying event to plan for and implement the discharge of an employee.

Is it unfair for an employee to be fired for a bumper sticker? Yes. Do we want the law second-guessing and lawyers armed to sue over every such employer decision? Absolutely not. Why? Because any firing, for any reason, can potentially then be second-guessed and made the subject of a lawsuit and this would change the whole dynamic of the workplace, certainly for small businesses.

Small businesses start and fail all the time and people come and go from them even more so. Does anyone really want lawyers to become an integral part of the routine dynamics of hiring and firing? Or to have to keep elaborate paper trails on each employee because every person hired might be a future lawsuit in the making? I would hope that budding entrepreneurs, of all people, would see the significant shortcomings with such an approach.