I agree with you that the legal standard on its own is insufficient. The most important part of freedom of speech is the government not punishing people for expression, but a larger culture of free speech means private actors with a degree of power over people’s lives, such as corporations, don’t unjustly punish people for speech.

At the same time, there’s freedom of association and free enterprise. I couldn’t support a standard that a business has no choice but to continue employing someone who keeps saying offensive things in public to the point it bothers a lot of their coworkers and hurts the company’s bottom line. Entertainment in particular involves a lot of publicity and PR work, so it makes sense for a TV/movie studio to want to distance itself from employees it comes to see as liabilities.

In the Carano case, I think it falls within a judgment call zone. I wouldn’t have faulted Disney if it kept employing her after these various posts, and I can’t fault them for making a decision they thought was best for their business in response to her posts. I understand some may disagree. My main point in the article is that it’s complicated, and not as easy a call as some are making it out to be.

(Also, yes I’ve watched the show, and I like it. It’s basically a Wild West setting, but in space, and there’d be some pretty big downsides to living in a world like that, where people often take the law into their own hands).