Protesting isn’t illegal. In fact it’s protected by the first amendment. There are plenty of doctors and healthcare workers currently peacefully protesting. They aren’t getting arrested.
Doing stupid **** and calling it protesting is not protesting. It’s doing stupid ****. Don’t do stupid **** and you’ll be fine.
tl;dr - I think the judgment call is more than just don't do stupid stuff. We're licensed professionals, we're not below the median IQ of society, we expect good judgment exercised in personal conduct as well as at the workplace when exercising rights.
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I separate what I am going to write from the sort of behaviors that would ordinarily get you arrested (vandalism, interference or harassment of police or other first responders, assault and battery, arson). Those should get you arrested and charged.
Unfortunately, that is the case in MN. Although the First Amendment clearly allows peaceful assembly, the government does have the right to narrowly interpret that in the interests of public safety. This is the same district where the state police is stupid enough to arrest a CNN crew live on air. It does not mean that there will be charges, but arrest and detainment have been somewhat arbitrary and indiscriminate on the ground. A dispersal order if not followed (and the police have a broad interpretation of that in practice here) could get a protester arrested for unlawful assembly even if otherwise peaceful, and we actually have UMN, HCMC, and other employees who are arrested and charged for this and arrested on failure to comply grounds. Unfair, unwarranted, or not, sorting this out is a mess and if supervision, employees have a right to protest but they do not have an unqualified right to make management take accountability for their choice to protest. How UMN is going to handle this, it probably will be more lenient than the current regulations apply for faculty, trainees, and staff, but there is a process involved.
As for the Civil Service and Uniformed Services, it is conditionally legal to be at a political demonstration in street clothing outside working hours unless directed otherwise. I am aware that the Uniformed Services were specifically directed otherwise in MN and surrounding states (in fact in writing as an order to the point of discipline should they be caught among even the peaceful protesters due to the sensitivities) and the Civil Service for my agency and the Fed Reserve kept it blander and said that they are not to involve themselves in protest violence and they were not to be caught outside of curfew at any protest site even if legally allowed to unless they were commuting to or from official work (health care professionals with a MN license are not subject to curfew, but it was politely pointed out that if the employee was not going to or from work either at the federal facility or another place and were notified by law authorities to explain their presence, they would have to answer us on why they broke curfew or be held accountable for unauthorized presence disruptive to civil order).
The reason though I somewhat disagree is that I dealing with a couple of non-clinical staff who have been arrested and charged with unlawful assembly even though they are on camera protesting peacefully, and I am personally certain they did not resist arrest or were problematic prisoners. As I told them all in writing as the protests were starting, they were free to protest civilly, but if I have to do OPM bureaucracy to deal with the arrests due to status or other considerations, I would not be happy about it. While I do not have any intention of doing anything about this besides warning them not to do this again, some DC or NLR HR punk might feel otherwise in a power trip and that is a slog to fix. I am sure I can get them off this as I doubt the charge would stick, but this is going to cost me about 40 hours of pointless bureaucracy and possibly having to talk to Regional Counsel about getting them off. Now that I had spent a good part of the afternoon having to fill out Suitability and Fitness character forms and getting character testimonies written by some of their peers and people they work with in DC, so that leadership or OPM does not put through an automatic adverse action on them. I will do it out of regard for them and also to keep morale among the rest of my staff, but I certainly am angry that their decisions make me take command responsibility as well as having to clean up the mess bureaucratically for their actions and will let them know it.
For the VA, it is not about what any of us think, it is what the Security and Investigations Center in North Little Rock thinks. If you do get arrested (without or without charge) and it flags through the SIC, you have a long explanation that you have to give to multiple parties and the process is arbitrary and opaque and not worth navigating for most Residency Program Directors or Academic Affilliates. Even if we all think this resident is a superstar, should DC or North Little Rock object, the candidate is finished from a bureaucratic perspective. Bear that in mind if your residency has a mandated VA component. From personal experience as a supervisor, the best of luck convincing your RPD or OAA coordinator to fill out the suitability exception paperwork and argue to the front office to save your position BEFORE you start if you get arrested.
If this was a resident, trainee, or a without-compensation employee, I would do nothing and let HR at whatever level feels like it fill out the automatic Proposed Adverse Actions form and let due process take care of the dirty work and remove them, no questions asked or intervention attempted. I do not care if they were peacefully protesting and the arrest was unfair, they specifically were directed not to get arrested, and I have no time to deal with suitability considerations. It is a judgment issue. If you feel so politically moved to protest, my heart goes out to you. But if you face consequences on the matter, I remind them that it was their decision to exercise their rights, and the consequences are part of their responsibilities. Making those consequences for their choices my problem is something that I think is fair to be angry with. I know I run an adult day care center as a federal supervisor, but there are boundaries to patience. Everyone knows that the police at the MPD act like cops, prospective protesters need to be extra careful and use their heads if they are going to participate.
