{"id":11125,"date":"2018-04-05T14:03:57","date_gmt":"2018-04-05T18:03:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=11125"},"modified":"2018-04-05T14:03:57","modified_gmt":"2018-04-05T18:03:57","slug":"cyclist-juli-briskman-sues-after-losing-job-for-trump-insult","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2018\/04\/05\/cyclist-juli-briskman-sues-after-losing-job-for-trump-insult\/","title":{"rendered":"Cyclist Juli Briskman sues after losing job for Trump insult"},"content":{"rendered":"

A US cyclist who was sacked over a viral photo of her making an obscene gesture to President Donald Trump’s motorcade is suing her former employer.<\/p>\n

Juli Briskman was fired by government contractor Akima LLC in November 2017 after a press photographer travelling with the president captured the image.<\/p>\n

“Americans should not be forced to choose between their principles and their paychecks,” her lawsuit states.<\/p>\n

Her lawyers argue her right to free speech was violated by the firing.<\/p>\n

Ms Briskman, 50, was on a weekend bike ride in October 2017 in the Washington DC suburbs when she encountered the armoured presidential motorcade.<\/p>\n

A pool photographer shared the image with journalists, and it quickly became the fodder of late-night TV comedians.<\/p>\n

“I never imagined that my ‘one-finger salute’ to the Presidential motorcade and its occupant would cost me my job,” the single mother of two teenagers\u00a0said in a statement accompanying her lawsuit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After she was fired, an online fundraiser to help her find a new job raised over $130,000 (\u00a392,000).<\/p>\n

“This lawsuit I filed today is not just about me. It’s about telling @realDonaldTrump that the government’s tax dollars cannot buy employees’ off-duty obedience,” she tweeted on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit was filed in Fairfax, Virginia, by the group Protect Democracy, which describes itself as a nonprofit “dedicated to preventing our democracy from declining into a more authoritarian form of government”.<\/p>\n

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juli_briskman<\/span><\/span>@julibriskman<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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I criticized @<\/span>realDonaldTrump<\/span><\/a>, but I never thought I would lose my job b\/c I live in the world’s greatest Democracy. I am fighting back because no American should have to choose between their pocketbooks & their principles @<\/span>GellerLawyers<\/span><\/a> @<\/span>protctdemocracy<\/span><\/a> https:\/\/<\/span>protectdemocracy.org\/briskman-v-aki<\/span>ma\/\u00a0<\/span>\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

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Briskman v. Akima – Protect Democracy<\/h3>\n

protectdemocracy.org<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Ms Briskman says that Akima LLC forced her to resign for allegedly violating the company’s social media policy.<\/p>\n

She had come forward to management earlier to share that she was the one seen in the viral photo.<\/p>\n

“I thought that it would probably get back to my company eventually,” Ms Briskman told CNN.<\/p>\n

However, she argues that earlier in 2017, the company’s senior director of operations posted in a Facebook discussion about Black Lives Matter: “You’re a [expletive] Libtard [expletive]”.<\/p>\n

She claims that executive was allowed to delete the offensive comment and keep his job.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit argues that she was not terminated for “the supposed obscenity of the middle finger”, but rather because of “concerns about upsetting the federal government”.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A US cyclist who was sacked over a viral photo of her making an obscene gesture to President Donald Trump’s motorcade is suing her former employer. Juli Briskman was fired by government contractor Akima LLC […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[5044,285,5043],"class_list":{"0":"post-11125","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-usa","9":"tag-akima","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-juli-briskman","12":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11125"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11129,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11125\/revisions\/11129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}