Athar Haseebullah, executive director of the ACLU of Nevada, along with the civil liberties nonprofit’s legal director Chris Peterson, took to a social media broadcast Thursday to fold the Kimmel issue into the many recent efforts to chill free speech. He never violated a free speech principle,” he said. Nexstar is currently in the process of a $6.2 billion merger with a media company called Tegna, a deal that will require approval from the FCC. Not wanting to give specific legal advice, Haseebullah and Peterson spoke more broadly about employee rights to free speech, which they characterized as a gray area that depends on a variety of factors. “The ultimate qualifier for all of this is if you’re part of a union, and that union has signed a collective bargaining agreement that includes a portion with respect to speech,” Haseebullah said.