According to the court’s opinion, the employer’s policy provided: “All UPS employees are prohibited from using or possessing a firearm . . . while on UPS property or while conducting official UPS business. This includes, but is not limited to: UPS vehicles, facilities (including parking lots, customer premises, etc.) and while on duty or during personal breaks.” The plaintiff “had previously signed an acknowledgment form stating that he was aware of this policy.” After the employer contacted the local sheriff “about a package containing possible contraband,” a K-9 search was conducted of cars in the parking lot. “During the search, one of the dogs identified [the plaintiff’s] car as a vehicle to inspect. [The plaintiff] consented to the search and informed the sheriff’s deputies that he had a firearm in the vehicle. The deputies found a .22 caliber Luger pistol under the front seat and its empty ammunition magazine in the glove compartment. [The plaintiff] did not have a permit to carry a concealed weapon and had not registered the pistol. The deputies confiscated the weapon and reported their findings to UPS. Two UPS officials then met with [the plaintiff], who conceded that he was aware of UPS’s weapons policies and admitted that he had knowingly left the pistol in his car. The UPS officials accordingly discharged [the plaintiff], effective immediately.”
The plaintiff “subsequently filed a lawsuit against UPS in federal court, alleging wrongful discharge. He claimed that his firing was in violation of the public policy regarding firearms embodied in Article I, § 4 of the Ohio Constitution.” The Sixth Circuit disagreed. “Although the Ohio Constitution provides a general right to bear arms, the state certainly does not have a “clear public policy” of allowing employees to possess firearms on the premises of their private employers. To the contrary, the Ohio legislature has specifically provided that employers may limit their employees’ rights to bear arms:
Nothing in this section shall negate or restrict a rule, policy, or practice of a private employer that is not a private college, university, or other institution of higher education concerning or prohibiting the presence of firearms on the private employer’s premises or property, including motor vehicles owned by the private employer.
Ohio Rev. Code § 2923.126(C)(1).” UPS was thus plainly within its rights, as codified in § 2923.126(C)(1), to prohibit its employees from possessing firearms in the parking area. Because [the plaintiff] cannot show that UPS violated a clear public policy of the state of Ohio, his wrongful-termination claim fails as a matter of law.” The Court also held that the plaintiff’s arguments concerning pretext were misplaced since no law had been violated and he was not a member of a protected class. Wanting to keep his gun away from his allegedly suicidal wife, while commendable if true, did not affect the employer’s right to terminate him for violating policy.
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