{"id":17133,"date":"2012-04-05T01:15:03","date_gmt":"2012-04-05T04:15:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=17133"},"modified":"2012-04-04T23:39:52","modified_gmt":"2012-04-05T02:39:52","slug":"judge-denies-injunction-for-facebook-marine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/05\/judge-denies-injunction-for-facebook-marine\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge Denies Injunction for Facebook Marine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joined by the ACLU, US Marine Sgt Gary Stein sued the US military<\/a> yesterday seeking an injunction<\/a> that would prevent or delay the Marines’ effort to discharge him<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0Judge Marilyn Huff\u00a0denied the injunction he requested<\/a>, saying he did not show he would suffer irreparable harm from the separation board, which leaves open the possibility he can gain an injunction should the board recommend discharge.<\/p>\n

His administrative discharge hearing is scheduled for today, though an actual decision by the responsible authority would likely occur later.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit can be viewed here<\/a>.\u00a0 Within it, Stein makes interesting allegations, many of which have already been discussed.\u00a0 For example, he notes that the Marine regulations require counseling before a decision is made to begin administrative discharge proceedings.\u00a0 Stein claims he heard nothing from his leadership at all until they told him they were beginning discharge proceedings.<\/p>\n

The military has great leeway in its decisions about personnel and retention.\u00a0 With “good order and discipline” as justification, it has great liberty, and deference from the US judicial system, to make various personnel decisions.<\/p>\n

Stein has advocates lining up behind him to defend his constitutionally protected right to free speech, including the ACLU.\u00a0 It is possible that argument may work, but his strongest claim may still be that the military has given him insufficient guidance which he can follow.\u00a0 Indeed, part of the lawsuit noted he had asked the Marines to answer three questions regarding his conduct and then allow him the opportunity to see if he could conduct himself in accordance with their responses.\u00a0 The root question:<\/p>\n

May an active duty, non-commissioned, U.S. Marine maintaining a Facebook web page bearing a clear disclaimer that all statements are personal views, not made in an official capacity and not representing the views of the Marine Corps, make statements thereon supporting or opposing either (i) a political party or (ii) a candidate for federal, state or local office or (iii) both?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As noted before, that’s not an academic question.\u00a0 Military regulations are not clear on the topic of social media<\/a>, and “The Social Corps,” the Marines’ attempt to give “suggestions” about social media, only makes it more confusing.\u00a0 As a result of the lack of guidance and feedback from his leadership, Stein asserts the Marines have violated his right to due process.<\/p>\n

Thus, there are constitutional questions on both sides.\u00a0 It may come down to an issue of military discretion versus “fairness” in application of what seems to be unwritten policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joined by the ACLU, US Marine Sgt Gary Stein sued the US military yesterday seeking an injunction that would prevent or delay the Marines’ effort to discharge him.\u00a0\u00a0Judge Marilyn Huff\u00a0denied the injunction he requested, saying he did not show he would suffer irreparable harm from the separation board, which leaves open the possibility he can gain an injunction should the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[12,1476,3063,3122,3121,149,2,2775],"class_list":["post-17133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fighter-pilot","tag-aclu","tag-facebook","tag-gary-stein","tag-injunction","tag-marilyn-huff","tag-marines","tag-military","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17133\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}