Pennsylvania man hurls vile, racist insults at cameraman and protesters, promptly gets swift justice

[Major Nikon]

87. This sub thread and any other is about whatever anyone wants to discuss

I'm just not that into getting told what can or can't be discussed in a thread. YMMV. I didn't attempt to conflate unemployment compensation law with other employment laws. So I'm not sure where you got that from. I was just making a comment on something someone else said. No need to read anything more into it.

Unless you can dig up case law that is very similar to this case, what you've managed to find isn't all that valuable. It's not as simple as saying the employee was or was not fired for reasons of their own cause. Employers are free to make whatever rules they want, but they can not always use those rules as a basis to deny unemployment compensation. You also have it exactly backwards. It is not the responsibility of the fired employee to disprove "willful disregard of the employer's interest". It's the responsibility of the employer to prove this within a preponderance of the evidence. Unless the aforementioned festering asshole mentioned his employer by name or was wearing a company logo, it would be pretty hard to prove the former employee was CLEARLY representing his employer's interest when he's off duty. So it's true that he can certainly be fired for that or for lots of other things, it's not so clear cut that his employer can use that as a basis to deny unemployment compensation. Inside the article linked by the OP, the employer CLEARLY states:

Today, we were disgusted to learn that one of MMC’s former employees used racial slurs and made racially charged comments during a peaceful protest in Mars, Pennsylvania, outside of work hours at a location with which we have no affiliation.

There's also a big difference between legal theory and the application of those laws. What they don't seem to spend much time teaching in business school is it's not always worth it to spend the time, effort, and expense of fighting an administrative law process even if you are reasonably sure you will prevail. Most employers are just simply not going to the trouble unless they are quite sure they have an open and shut case, and sometimes not even then, and what you've presented most certainly doesn't make this open and shut.