Popular Tea Party Symbol Could Constitute Workplace Harassment

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is considering whether wearing clothing in the workplace with the Gadsden flag printed on it constitutes legally actionable racial harassment.

According to Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor who runs the “Volokh Conspiracy” blog at The Washington Post, the EEOC ruled two months ago that it will need to collect more evidence in a case filed in Jan. 2014 by an African American federal employee who complained about his coworker wearing a hat with the Gadsden flag printed on it.

The complainant said that the Gadsden flag, which was designed during the Revolutionary War in 1775 and has become popular with the Tea Party movement, is racist because its designer, Christopher Gadsden, was “a slave trader & owner of slaves.”

And though the complainant made no claim that his coworker made any racist remarks while wearing the hat, he said that the Gadsden flag — the iconic yellow banner, which shows a coiled rattlesnake above the words “Don’t Tread on Me” — is a “historical indicator of white resentment against blacks stemming largely from the Tea Party.”

Read more from The Daily Caller

Photo: Getty Images