Miami Beach Police Department communications unit supervisor Debra Berg spends her off-duty hours "writhing in the throes of online group sex," as a published report describes it, in an Internet business she and her husband run. The department knows it – they could only accuse her of running an outside business without city approval – but the same report says her superiors are not exactly thrilled by her secondary employment.
"The friction her circumstance has caused mirrors similar situations across the country," said the Miami Herald June 21, "as corporations and public institutions settle into the Internet age and negotiate the boundaries between an individual's self-expression – which can now be distributed with extraordinary swiftness – and an organization's interest in protecting its public image."
''This is a sexual preference that doesn't affect anything at my job," Berg told the paper, "and the things are two separate entities, and I'm two separate people, really. Had I been employed in the private sector, I feel they wouldn't pay any attention to this.''
Maybe she should put that one to George and Tracy Miller, who were employed in the private sector. The Arizona husband-and-wife critical care nurses were suspended and then fired from their jobs at Scottsdale Memorial Hospital in late 1999 over an adult Website they began – mostly featuring Tracy, as "Dakota Rae," and often featuring George as "Jake" – to help build a college fund for their children.
The Millers won the right to sue to get their jobs back, but the couple never went through with it and Tracy Miller left nursing entirely shortly thereafter. The couple both kept their nursing licenses, however, until earlier this year. They surrendered their licenses after George Miller lost his job as Paradise Valley Hospital's nursing supervisor – not because of the Website, but because he tested positive for a drug he took for chronic back trouble, even after his prescription expired.
And, indeed, according to the Herald, Berg is retiring from the Miami Beach police come September, saying it has "been a little difficult having everyone in the department know [about the site]." She also told the paper she hoped her father didn't learn about it.
Those who think First Amendment issues arise in cases like Berg or the Millers should beware that the First Amendment applies only concerning the public sector, which would seem to give Berg an advantage the Millers never really had. So says Lawrence Walters, the Florida-based First Amendment and adult entertainment attorney whom at one point represented the Millers – and has also represented a Maryland corrections officer who lost her job after her superiors learned she once sold nudes of herself to an adult site.
''There is a real lack of awareness in the employed public in general about this issue, and they're shocked when they learn private employers can terminate for no reason,'' he told the Herald. The Maryland corrections officer was reinstated after a judge ordered it on free speech grounds, the paper added.
Berg told police investigators she took up her adult site as a hobby, not a job, at first; though she also told them her husband actually runs the site as a business and she gives nothing but technical support – even though she claimed income from the site on her federal taxes the past two years, the Herald said.
"Her raunchy presence on the Internet is the object of many jokes," the paper said.
"In Berg's last evaluation, filed in December, her supervisors noted a problem with her image among those who work under her in the department. ''She has the potential and ability to excel, but she must also gain respect from her subordinates to reach that goal,'' Berg's manager wrote. 'She must... not allow her subordinates to ridicule and/or mock her.'''
