>And since they appear to have used the willful misrepresentation of what he wrote as the reason. Wouldn't this help Google's case. Employers are allowed to fi

>And since they appear to have used the willful misrepresentation of what he wrote as the reason. Wouldn't this help Google's case. Employers are allowed to fire at will employees for any reason, or no reason, except for specific reasons specified in law. As far as I am aware, there is no law against fire an employee for being publicly accused of engaging in political speech (or whatever other behaviour Google wants to cite). The laws are only speak to fireing in retaliation for actual conduct. Of course, this might be one of those cases where the courts take a more holistic look and determine that the laws also protects employees accused of the behaviours, regardless of if they engaged in them. Also, while the memo was misrepresented, the misrepresentation is not so egregious as to make this a slamdunk arguement in this case, even if it were an accepted legal theory in general.