Ryan Adams canceled his latest tour this week. His explanation? He's broke. Sick. Tired. Defeated.

Maybe all of that is true. Touring is brutal. The music business is unforgiving. And I don't take pleasure in watching someone suffer.

But I also don't have much sympathy for Ryan Adams.

For years, multiple women—including Phoebe Bridgers and Mandy Moore (his ex-wife)—have described the same basic pattern. Adams allegedly offered to mentor young female artists, pursued them romantically, and then, when those relationships soured or his advances were rejected, retaliated by undermining their careers or harassing them. Those allegations permanently altered how many view him.

What struck me wasn't just the allegations. It was how many musicians felt compelled to turn them into songs.

Phoebe Bridgers gave us "Motion Sickness".

Jason Isbell wrote "Chaos and Clothes".

Lucinda Williams unloaded with "Shadows & Doubts" and "Little Rock Star".

Old 97's? Depending on how you count, they may have written three songs inspired by Adams: "The New Kid", "Book of Poems", and "Crash on the Barrelhead".

I can't think of many musicians who've inspired an entire playlist of songs about what an awful human being they allegedly are.

That last one, "Crash on the Barrelhead", hits especially hard. Its message is unmistakable: if you keep living this way, eventually your choices catch up with you. Twenty-seven years later, these lyrics feel almost prophetic:

You're gonna crash on the barrelhead, son
You'll regret the things that you done
One of these days you're gonna rue
All the messed up things you do

The universe has a funny way of keeping score. Not always. Not quickly. But often enough.

Your reputation is the ledger.

It's one of the few things you build every single day without even realizing it. Every decision, every interaction, every kindness, every betrayal—they all become part of the story other people tell about you.

Once that story hardens, it's incredibly difficult to rewrite. Trust takes years to earn, seconds to lose, and for many people is never fully regained. Rebuilding a reputation is far harder than rebuilding a career or a tour schedule.

Eventually, enough people tell the same story about you that it stops sounding like gossip and starts sounding like your legacy.

Live your life so that you're never the subject of someone else's song about what an awful person you are.
The EEOC Just Broke Ground on EEO-1's Funeral 🪦 — via Eric Meyer's Employer Handbook Blog

Once an employee requests an ADA accommodation, the employer has to give them exactly what they ask for… is NOT the law. In fact, it's the opposite of the law.

The ADA requires a reasonable accommodation—not the employee's preferred accommodation. Further, the ADA is a two-way street; employees have obligations, too.

One recent decision, Belval v. Electric Boat Corp., drives those points home.

"Sure, I posted racist memes and comments on my public Facebook page while identifying myself as a Chicago firefighter. But firing me violated my 1st Amendment rights."

That's the essence of last week's 7th Circuit opinion in Inendino v. Nance-Holt. And while the court spent most of its time parsing constitutional doctrine, I came away thinking about something much simpler.

Sam Inendino spent 16 years as a Chicago firefighter and EMT. On his public Facebook page, where he prominently identified himself as a firefighter, he posted a series of racist and offensive comments directed at Black people, Asian Americans, immigrants, and others. Members of the public complained. The City investigated. He was fired. An arbitrator found just cause for his discharge. The 7th Circuit ultimately upheld it. 

The legal issue wasn't whether his posts were offensive. Everyone agreed they were.

The harder question was whether the 1st Amendment protected them.

Interestingly, the 7th Circuit actually gave Inendino more credit than the trial court had. It assumed that many of his posts—even crude, racist ones—touched on matters of public concern because they commented on current political controversies surrounding Black Lives Matter, policing, immigration, and public officials. 

But that's where many people stop reading.

The court didn't say, "Speech about public issues means you can't be fired."

Instead, it asked the next question: Does the government's interest as an employer outweigh the employee's interest in speaking?

For a firefighter whose job requires the trust of every member of the public, the answer was yes.

The court emphasized 7th facts that employers should remember. Inendino wasn't speaking anonymously. He publicly identified himself as a firefighter. His page featured photos of him in uniform on a fire truck. His comments were visible to everyone. And he served a predominantly Black neighborhood while posting content that openly demeaned Black residents—the very people he might someday be called upon to rescue. Under those circumstances, the City had a compelling interest in protecting public trust in its emergency services. 

All of that is important.

But here's what struck me.

Too often, cases like this are framed as though the employee is merely the victim of an employer's overreaction. The conversation becomes about cancel culture, free speech, corporate overreach, or constitutional rights.

Missing from that conversation is the most obvious point.

You are still responsible for your own choices.

No one forced Inendino to make his Facebook page public.
No one forced him to identify himself as a firefighter.
No one forced him to post racist memes.
No one forced him to keep them online.

Employees have rights. Employers have obligations. But neither erases personal accountability.

This wasn't a case about someone being punished for an immutable characteristic or an unpopular belief quietly held. It was about a series of deliberate, public decisions that predictably destroyed the trust essential to performing a public-facing job.

The law often protects people from the consequences of who they are. It rarely protects them from the foreseeable consequences of what they choose to do. That's especially true in employment law.

If you publicly associate yourself with your employer while broadcasting views that undermine your ability to perform your job or destroy the public's trust in the institution you serve, don't be surprised when those decisions have employment consequences.

That's not a post-mortem on free speech. It's a post-mortem on personal responsibility.

How employers pursue diversity, equity, and inclusion matters far more than whether they pursue it.

The EEOC's recent pursuit of Nike illustrates the point. The agency says that Nike's DEI program is illegal. That's not, however, what Title VII says.

According to a New York Times investigation, EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas has spent more than two years building a case that Nike's diversity initiatives amount to unlawful discrimination against white employees. The investigation didn't begin with an employee complaint. It began with a commissioner charge, followed by an expansive probe into Nike's hiring goals, internships, mentorship programs, leadership development, executive compensation, and layoffs.

The current administration's message is clear: DEI equals discrimination. Except that's not what Title VII says.

Under longstanding Title VII principles—not the EEOC's current enforcement position—a lawful DEI program isn't one that ignores race or sex. It's one that never uses race or sex to make employment decisions.

There is nothing illegal about wanting a more diverse workforce. There is nothing illegal about expanding recruiting efforts, offering mentorships, sponsoring affinity groups, measuring workforce demographics, or setting aspirational diversity goals.
Where employers get into trouble is when race or sex becomes the reason someone is hired, promoted, selected for a program, or laid off.

Ironically, the Nike investigation also provides employers with a useful compliance roadmap. In early 2025, Nike and the EEOC reached a settlement agreement under which Nike affirmed that its training and development opportunities would remain open to all employees and that it would encourage everyone to participate.

Then Trump took office. Because the EEOC had never countersigned the agreement, it withdrew the settlement and instead launched a sweeping investigation into nearly a decade of Nike's hiring, compensation, training, and layoff decisions.

Yet the proposed settlement reflects exactly what employment lawyers (including me) have been advising clients for years. If you're offering leadership development, mentorships, internships, or networking opportunities, make them available to everyone. Use objective selection criteria. Focus on expanding opportunity, not limiting it. Build inclusive programs, not exclusive ones.

The Supreme Court may eventually narrow what employers can do in the DEI space. The current administration clearly hopes so. The EEOC's enforcement priorities expressly seek cases that could reshape the law. But we're not there yet, and we may never get there.

Employers shouldn't treat every DEI initiative as radioactive. They should treat DEI like every other employment practice: design it carefully, administer it fairly, and make sure it complies with Title VII.

Because under Title VII, pursuing diversity isn't unlawful. Making employment decisions based on protected characteristics is.

Federal disability discrimination laws exist to ensure that people with disabilities are judged on their abilities—not their diagnoses. They require reasonable accommodations. They prohibit discrimination. They level the playing field.

What they do not do is excuse misconduct.

That's the important takeaway from Brantley v. University of Texas at Austin, a recent 5th Circuit decision that rejected a student's attempt to use the Rehabilitation Act as a shield against discipline for repeatedly harassing a professor.

The facts are difficult.

After taking one of the professor's classes, the student continued emailing him. Not once or twice. According to the court, hundreds of times.

The emails ranged from academic topics to deeply personal discussions of trauma, mental health, and self-diagnosis. The professor repeatedly tried to establish boundaries. He provided information about campus mental health resources. He asked that future communications be limited to academic matters. Eventually, he pleaded with her to stop contacting him altogether, explaining that the constant emails were causing him "a tremendous amount of distress."

She kept emailing.

The university ultimately placed her on disciplinary probation.

Her lawsuit didn't deny the conduct. Instead, she argued that her disabilities—including ADHD, complex PTSD, and PMDD—caused her communication patterns, and that disciplining her without accommodating those disability-related behaviors violated the Rehabilitation Act.

The 5th Circuit wasn't persuaded.

Relying on long-standing ADA precedent from the employment context, the court reiterated an important principle: disability discrimination laws do not require employers—or universities—to tolerate harassment simply because the person engaging in it has a disability.

As the court put it, federal anti-discrimination law cannot be used to "immunize" someone from the consequences of harassing another person.

That's exactly right.

This principle matters well beyond higher education. Employers routinely face similar arguments when employees engage in threatening, abusive, or otherwise inappropriate workplace conduct and later claim the behavior stemmed from anxiety, PTSD, ADHD, bipolar disorder, or another medical condition.

The ADA requires employers to consider reasonable accommodations that help qualified employees perform their jobs. It does not require employers to excuse misconduct that violates legitimate workplace rules or infringes on the rights of others.

That's not because disability rights are unimportant.

It's because everyone else has rights too.

Coworkers have the right to work free from harassment. Supervisors have the right to establish reasonable professional boundaries. Employers have the obligation to maintain safe, respectful workplaces.

Perhaps most importantly, arguing that disability should excuse harassment does a profound disservice to the millions of employees living with disabilities who never engage in this type of conduct.

Most people with ADHD don't harass their supervisors.

Most people with PTSD don't ignore repeated requests to stop contacting coworkers.

Most people with mental health conditions understand and respect professional boundaries every day.

When litigants suggest that disability itself excuses harassment, they reinforce exactly the kind of harmful stereotypes disability laws were enacted to eliminate—that people with disabilities cannot control themselves or should be held to different standards of conduct.

That's wrong as a matter of law. It's even worse as a matter of public perception.

Disability accommodation and workplace accountability are not mutually exclusive. Good employers can—and should—provide reasonable accommodations while also enforcing neutral conduct rules that protect everyone in the workplace.

The ADA isn't a license to harass. And courts are right to keep it that way.

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