I've given this a lot of thought, and I believe this would crush the cancel culture we're seeing if paired with other laws. However, I'd like to verify if this sounds like a good idea or not, so I'm posting this for feedback.
I believe only merit and failure to do as requested should be grounds for firing/removal. What we've been seeing is that people are getting sacrificed to the rage mob for wrongthink, which has nothing to do with merit or failing to do as requested.
Therefore, if ideological differences is what's being misused to get people fired, ideology needs to become a protected class. This would at least allow people to contest being fired if they can find proof that someone invoked differences in ideology to cause the firing to occur.
I doubt it would entirely fix it, but it's a quick and easy bandage to push out and it's better than doing nothing.
The problem there is, how do you enforce it or tell a line has been crossed? If a company lays off a person because they're facing economic hardship, if "individual" was a protected class, every person laid off could challenge the job loss as being done because of their status as an individual. Would the company need to prove for every employee that those employees were statistically the least-valuable among all employees they could have removed?
These specific words or exceptions makes it easy for both the person challenging and the company defending the challenge. The person needs to invoke the specific instance they believe they were wrongfully fired for and find evidence of that instance being true, and the company needs to prove that the individual had failed a request or lacked merit.
Every individual could challenge it. We kind of already have that with unemployment insurance, which you cannot claim under certain circumstances when you were let go or fired.