UNDATED – You’re fed up at work and after you get home one night, you post something like “my boss is a total jerk” on your Facebook page or Twitter account. Not surprisingly, word of the post gets back to your workplace.

Outside of the “what was I thinking when I posted that” reflection moment, there is another question: can you be fired for it?

That is the question a lot of workers and employers are now asking as social media posts on Facebook, Twitter and myriad other social and professional networking sites.

What legal rights do employers have when it comes to opinions expressed by employees online on their own time? Do employees have any protections against retribution for social media posts that make it back to the boss’ office?

In a new investigation, KATU News found no shortage of disparaging remarks posted on social media sites about hated bosses, despised co-workers and digs against employers.

But the legal rights surrounding those posts are being debated.

One post KATU News found - 'I just got fired because of Facebook.  A picture of me in my underwear did the trick” – highlights the issue. The poster’s privacy setting was set to “all content is public.”

Doreen Marino is currently in a legal battle that goes to the heart of the issue.

"Never in a million years would I have thought this was going to get me fired,” Marino told KATU News.

Her case is one of the first in the country to address employee posts on the Internet.

On a MySpace page, she and others vented about their employer: Houston’s restaurant in New Jersey.

A federal court declared her boss had no right to access the password protected sight.

The lawsuit is part of the PowerPoint presentation Portland labor attorney Tamara Russell uses when companies want to develop policies about employee Internet postings - or policies about how the company researches prospective employees on the Web.

"All of this is new stuff for employers to deal with,” Russell told KATU News. Russel is affiliated with Barran Liebman, LLP.

"When an employer decides to take an application and do a Google search, or search on Facebook, they're actually asking all the questions they're prohibited from asking by law,” Russell says.

For instance, stumbling across a picture of a job applicant revealing she survived cancer could be a no – no.  Employers aren't supposed to take someones health background into consideration when hiring.

Russell said other possible abuses could include declining to employ a person because their profile or public posts said they are dating or married to someone of a different race.
 
But employer Roger Hughes of Portland Energy Conservation Inc. sees the issue from a hiring standpoint.

“Social networking has become the latest thing in recruitment of talent,” Hughes said. He also uses social Web sites to promote job openings.

However, his staff doesn't pry into applicants' social websites for concern over breaking the law.  
    
But for current employees, the company is thinking about instituting a policy about what workers can post or say publicly about the firm.

"Everything we say is in the public domain, whether it's in a conversation with an individual on the street corner, or if somebody else hears that info, they pick it up and put it on MySpace or the Internet and virally it goes everywhere,” Hughes said.

But Tamara Russell has a caution for those working in a non-government company: "employees don't generally have first amendment rights if they're not working for a public employer.”

Which means you could still be fired if you haven't set your social website to “private” and then declare to the world your boss is a jerk.

Of course, giving away company trade secrets in any realm is definitely grounds for getting the boot.

However, there's yet to be a lawsuit in Oregon that puts the new media and the old laws currently on the books to the test.