As president of the Student Bar Association at NYU law school, Ryna Workman* has her say.
This was not the position of NYU Law School, according to its dean. This was not a position agreed upon or approved by the SBA. This was the personal position of Ryna Workman, put forth as the position of the SBA. Before the day was out, the offer of employment as an associate by Winston & Strawn was rescinded.
Today, Winston & Strawn learned that a former summer associate published certain inflammatory comments regarding Hamas’ recent terrorist attack on Israel and distributed it to the NYU Student Bar Association. These comments profoundly conflict with Winston & Strawn’s values as a firm. Accordingly, the Firm has rescinded the law student’s offer of employment.
As communicated yesterday to all Winston personnel, we remain outraged and deeply saddened by the violent attack on Israel over the weekend. Our hearts go out to our Jewish colleagues, their families, and all those affected.
Winston stands in solidarity with Israel’s right to exist in peace and condemns Hamas and the violence and destruction it has ignited in the strongest terms possible. We look forward to continuing to work together to eradicate anti-Semitism in all forms and to the day when hatred, bigotry, and violence against all people have been eliminated. Our strength lies in our unity, empathy, and shared humanity.
On twitter, Orin Kerr asked whether this was the right response or cancel culture. There was significant backlash within the legal community, including an online petition demanding that the offer of employment be rescinded. But in the larger scheme of mobs, this neither caught a great deal of attention nor stood out given that many other law schools, including Harvard and Yale, and law student groups were similarly supportive of rape, murder and beheading.
As argued before, there needs to be a definitional line between normal criticism, or as the kids prefer to call it, “consequences,” and cancel culture. I’ve attempted to draw the line at secondary boycotts, where people not only criticize and condemn ideas they find repugnant, but then push a third party, here the future employer Winston & Strawn, to take punitive action against the individual who expressed the reprehensible words. In other words, you can condemn Workman for what she wrote and/or that she presented it in her position as Student Bar Association president rather than as her personal view alone without demanding that her job offer from Winston & Strawn be rescinded.
But was it cancel culture? David Lat, who has his pulse on big law, offered his breakdown.
- As a strong defender of free speech, I recognize Workman’s right to voice their opinion, even if some or even many of us find it abhorrent.
- At the same time, a private, reputation-conscious employer like Winston is not required to ignore Workman’s comments, especially given how much negative publicity they generated for the firm.
- One reader suggested to me that Winston could have justified the offer rescission by citing incredibly poor judgment or a total lack of self-awareness, as opposed to inconsistency with “firm values.” In the words of this reader—who, to be clear, also views Workman’s comments as reprehensible—“Now Winston will face pressure to summarily defenestrate the next person discovered to have taken the inconvenient side of some inflammatory issue.” [UPDATE (3 p.m.): As noted by several commenters, a significant part of the poor judgment is using the SBA newsletter to disseminate personal views, without consulting or even notifying other SBA members.]
- The three-paragraph Winston email reprinted above could have been replaced by a single paragraph: “Today, Winston & Strawn learned that a former summer associate published certain inflammatory comments regarding Hamas’ recent terrorist attack on Israel and distributed them to the NYU Student Bar Association. These comments reflect extremely poor professional judgment. Accordingly, the Firm has rescinded the law student’s offer of employment.”
- This entire episode highlights the difficulties that leaders and institutions create for themselves when they take positions on every issue in the news, from the monumental to the mundane. See also Dean Gillian Lester of Columbia Law School, who issued a stronger criticism of Hamas yesterday after getting flak for her original missive.
On the one hand, W&S issued its statement and rescinded its offer of employment on the same day that Workman’s “message” was issued. It neither reversed itself nor waited to see whether the public backlash would have traction. That would suggest that this was the firm’s reaction to Workman, and not to the “mob” demanding they reverse their hiring offer.
On the other hand, as David notes, the firm is “reputation conscious,” and by the time it issued its statement and acted, the news had already spread fairly widely within the online legal community and was met with near-universal condemnation, at least from serious people.
As a rule, free speech does not mean freedom from consequences. But when the reaction isn’t to your speech, but rather to the public reaction to your speech, it’s cancel culture and third parties should be strong and bold enough to refuse to let the mob dictate their actions. It’s also possible, of course, that a reaction can have attributes of both, where third party condemnation aligns with the first party’s reaction, such that they are all in agreement that the speech was repugnant and unacceptable, and the first party independently wants nothing to do with the speaker.
Which is it with Ryna Workman and Winston & Strawn? Circumstances here make it hard to reach a clear conclusion, but it would seem most likely that the decision to rescind the offer of employment belonged to the firm, and was validated by public reaction. It’s almost impossible to conceive of any law firm having an associate on staff who has so vehemently expressed a position that co-workers, superiors and clients would find so abhorrent and disgusting that they would refuse to work with her.
What may play among her friends at NYU was not going to be acceptable to lawyers and clients who didn’t share her blaming Hamas’ rape, murder and beheadings on Israel. And when it comes to rape, murder and beheadings, it’s a line that no decent person would cross.
Update: Eugene Volokh notes that W&S’s rescission could be deemed discrimination on the basis of religion.
There is no general constitutional right of employers to refuse to hire people whose statements or actions are “profoundly in conflict with [the employer’s] values as a firm.” Federal and state laws, for instance, generally forbid discrimination in employment based on the employee’s religion, however much the religion might profoundly conflict with the employer’s values.
With all respect to Eugene’s effort to be fair, praise for rape, murder and beheadings is not a matter of religion. The correct framing is that there is no constitutional right of a putative employee not to have a job offer rescinded because she praised rape, murder and beheadings.
*I’m informed that Workman identifies as non-binary, uses the salutation “Mx.” and the pronouns they/them. I will not.
“Mx” means what? Mixed Up? Wonder if she would be feeling the same way if she was at the Supernova music festival?
Who cares? It’s a matter of basic respect to refer to people by the name they prefer. Your name, for example, appears to be Michael, and I assume you would find it pretty shitty if someone insisted on calling you “Mikey” after you repeatedly requested to be called Michael. This is no different. I’m not on the Trans Train or anything and think the pronoun discourse is silly and overblown, but I also don’t go out of my way to be nasty to people I don’t know for no reason.
“Mx.” isn’t a name, and it’s a matter of basic respect not to be the asshole who demands that others use their fake woke title. See how bullshit cuts both ways?
Since just about no one knew that this particular firm had offered this particular law student a job, the firm could have just rescinded the offer via a private communication, without making a public announcement. So, yes, the firm canceled her and wants us to know that it did.
If this were correct, you would have a point. But it’s not correct. Almost immediately, it became known that she was a summer associate at Winston & Strawn and had been offered an associate position. How this became know, I can’t say, but everybody knew it.
How many people do you think “everybody” is? If the firm had privately retracted the offer, those people would have found out by the same colleague/rumor network from which they learned she had an offer in the first place. If the firm wanted to make a public statement about its support for Israel, it could have done that without reference to internal personnel decisions. The fact that they chose to link a public statement in support of Israel to a personnel matter looks like cancelling to me.
To be super catty…..
I would have rescinded the offer because she started this message to the community with “Hi ya’ll”.
Seriously though, I suspect a lot places of employment would have rescinded an offer of employment after such a statement and doing it publicly is a PR move for the future. Doing it privately would probably have backfired as well. This way they are ahead of things when the inevitable lawsuit for discrimination hits the papers…..
I think they could have been less abrupt and more socially graceful about it. Perhaps, as a severance (or rescission) bonus, sending Ryna on a paid travel fellowship to Gaza, to stand with Hamas.
She’s nonbinary so Hamas would be especially happy to see her.
all the gay lgbt people in favor of the palestinians spend time in their jails after they attemot to speak out or be themselves ie non binary,, there is no such thing in the arab universe,,, there is not one arab country that has a democratic govt or allows rights to women or any lgbt people, , ask the women of iran what life is like for them,,,,yet she doesnt protest any of that,,,,
Having been a law student many moons ago, it’s no secret that if you are on the big law track, you need to be thoughtful about what you say in public because no big firm will hire you if you publicly say controversial things. I imagine it’s worse now that there is social media. Big law firms are businesses first and foremost that rely on well heeled clients who have many other options and can take their business elswhere. If you piss off the wrong people, you don’t keep your job there. This firm’s response does not surprise me. My guess is that if this were 15 16 years ago and an associate became part of the Occupy Wall Street movement and was very vocal about their criticism of capitalism, they wouldn’t be keeping their job in big law. In short, it’s easy to have an offer rescinded for far less than what she did.
So members of the jury,
That’s how it came to pass,
That Ryna slew a law career,
With the jawbone of an ass. . .
Canceled? Yes, she cancelled herself. The law firm needs to go back and reflect deeply on how this person was even selected to begin with. So does her law school. Opinions like hers are hard for people who think that way to edit out from their ordinary conversation. No one saw the clues to this (or heard this) when this student was interviewing?
A lot of people have crazy or exceptionally inflammatory opinions on a couple things that they might share only with people they’re close to (who might be more sympathetic or understanding), it’s taking the 20/10 hindsight to act like everyone should have seen that in their character in the first place, like the next-door serial killer who everyone thought was a nice guy who wouldn’t hurt a fly. It’s a lot easier to “edit out” those opinions from ordinary conversation than you’d think, if the ordinary conversation has nothing to do with those opinions.
The issue should be that Workman used her public-facing position to make these extremely inflammatory statements, not that she simply holds them privately. The latter shades too much into “cancel culture”, where singular non-public thoughts, opinions, or in some cases actions are used as a judge of the person’s entire character. But that is not what Workman did here.
Probably selected for being a “Mx” to further the firm’s LGBTQ-friendliness and diversity cred. The firm probably did not foresee the Hamas angle, given the probability that in any actual real-world encounter, Hamas would exterminate Ryna.
“I’m a leftist” is pretty common among young law students and shouldn’t be disqualifying in and of itself. “I support rape, murder, and beheading of infants, as long as they’re Jews” isn’t something that can reasonably be uncovered during a job interview.
Eh, the firm did her a favor. With the street cred she has by the rescinded offer she can get a job with the ACLU, SPLC, or any of the anti-American organizations.
I doubt that. I don’t think the ACLU would embrace someone who supports terrorism. That said, they would defend her right to state her point of view. I think they would also be wary of her horrendous judgment. And then, of course, there’s the “Hey y’all.”
To borrow the language of the Twitterati, Mx Workman is simply facing the reasonable consequences of their actions. Taking a “Courageous and principled stance” TM on a controversial issue may have results other than Twitter clout and in group tummy rubs
A prospective employer can reasonably distance itself from poor judgment and opposing views.
The few times in my life I had to hire a lawyer, their competency is all I cared about. I could not have cared less about their views on Palestine.
I am in the process of getting a real estate lawyer. I will not be asking their opinion on global politics. I will be asking for referrals.
You’re not Winston & Strawn’s clientele. The corps that use biglaw are very concerned that an attorney representing them not have skeletons in her closet that would harm the corps’ reputation.
If I knew an employee at a law firm endorsed Hamas’ terrorism against the Jews (or any terrorism), I would seek a different law firm. I think I am in the majority.
If your real estate lawyer issued a controversial statement purportedly on your behalf without consulting you beforehand (as Mx. Workman did here), I am guessing you would not be pleased. The firm did not need to reference its “values” to justify the rescission of its offer; it could have just said that this student’s decision to use the SBA newsletter to disseminate personal views, without consulting or even notifying other SBA members, reflected extremely poor professional judgment and their offer has therefore been rescinded.
‘There is no general constitutional right of employers to refuse to hire people whose statements or actions are “profoundly in conflict with [the employer’s] values as a firm.”’
No, there’s a general right of employers to hire, or not hire, whomever the hell they please, for any or no reason, so long as it isn’t a reason prohibited by law. This phrasing is just word salad, and unworthy of Volokh.
Eugene and I have been discussing by email what he meant here. I suggested it didn’t read the way he thought it did. He disagreed.
religion has nothing to do with it when a US person sides with and verbally supports a US designated terrorist organization they have no legal standing to claim religious discrimination.
Maybe Ryna subscribes to Kali and Durga. The Brits suppressed that, back in the day. Damn their colonialist disrespect for indigenous sects. Fookin’ limeys.
Your take and his are not in conflict, and he’s written recently, separately, on the matter. Certain states place limits on whether employers can discriminate based on differences in the large umbrella of concerns that “values” can cover. In those states, refusing to hire, or firing based on an encompassed difference in values can indeed be prohibited by law.
First amendment “freedom of association” has not been held to include a general freedom to employ or not employ who you please, at least where “free exercise” is not also implicated in the case of explicitly religious organizations.
ISTM, A cancellation is a business refusing to sell or removing a standard product or service, eg credit card, “de-banking”, restaurant meal, or cake off the shelf.
Refusing a deeper, specialized relationship, eg design or employment, is a decision about direct association or private group membership always subject to complicated factors.
The transcript from the recent partners’ meeting was just released.* It includes:
Managing partner: We’re considering new lawyers. This one is noisy. Do we need noise?
All other partners and the firm dog: No.
*Even though no thinking lawyer would do this, it could happen.