SC nursing home employee fired for ‘extremely offensive’ social media post
A senior living home in the S.C. Midlands has fired an employee over what the home called an “extremely offensive and inappropriate” post on social media.
Lutheran Homes of South Carolina announced in a Facebook post Thursday that an employee of the Heritage at Lowman retirement home in White Rock has been terminated over the Facebook post.
“The former employee’s comments do not reflect our ministry’s mission and values and violate our organization’s workplace policies,” Lutheran Homes’ post reads. “We do not condone this type of behavior and this person is no longer part of our organization.”
The post doesn’t not specify what the fired worker said, but a screen grab of a post shared with The State from someone identified as a Lowman employee used the n-word.
Lutheran Homes operates five retirement communities in South Carolina, including two in the Columbia area, according to their website.
The firing comes as another Midlands retirement home, Carolina Gardens in West Columbia, is investigating racist messages that it said are linked to an employee at that assisted living facility. The woman identified in images shared with The State has filed a police report saying the messages are fake and her Facebook account may have been hacked.
The Lowman employee is the latest person to lose a job over social media posts in the wake of protests against the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis last month, igniting renewed focus on issues of race and racism across the country.
In recent days, a Charleston County School District employee was fired for a Facebook post making racist comments about the Black Lives Matter movement, and a student at Clemson University is no longer enrolled after school officials investigated a post that included a racial slur and references to the Ku Klux Klan.
This story was originally published June 15, 2020 at 6:14 PM.
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