Okonowsky v. Garland, 109 F.4th 1166 (9th Cir. 2024)
Lindsay Okonowsky, a former staff psychologist at the Federal Correctional Complex at Lompoc, discovered that a corrections lieutenant (Steven Hellman) with whom she worked and who was responsible for overseeing the safety of guards, prison staff, and inmates had created an Instagram page that contained multiple posts that were overtly sexist, racist, anti-Semitic
Employers are increasingly turning to social networking sites to find additional information about candidates. In fact, recent articles suggest that an applicant’s failure to have a social media presence is viewed by many employers as a decided negative, and a 2006 CareerBuilder survey found that 70 percent of employers use social networking sites to research candidates, a number that certainly has gone up since the
California Governor Jerry Brown has signed a new law protecting employee use of social media by prohibiting an employer from requiring or requesting an employee or applicant for employment to disclose a username or password for the purpose of accessing the employee’s personal social media. Additionally, an employer may not require an employee or applicant to divulge any personal social media unless the employer reasonably