William Russell Shaver never thought that the MySpace page he shares with his wife would get him into trouble. But it did.

Last year, he lost his job as a high-school bus driver for Davie County Schools and was asked to leave the Cooleemee Volunteer Fire Department, where he was a volunteer firefighter and emergency medical technician.

According to a letter provided by Shaver, the school system dismissed him because of his Web page of MySpace.com, saying that he had damaged his "position to be a role model for Davie High School and in the school community."

The fire department won't comment, but Shaver said that fire officials also cited his MySpace page when they asked him to leave.

He has sued in federal court, alleging that the school system and the fire department used his page as an excuse. He alleges that the real reason he was asked to leave both places is because he practices Wicca, a pagan religion that emphasizes nature. "They had to find another excuse," he said.

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Jennifer Rudinger, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in North Carolina, could not comment on Shaver's lawsuits. But she did say that in general, employers are increasingly monitoring what their employees or prospective employees are doing on the Internet.

"Schools are monitoring what students communicate online, and the government is monitoring what law-abiding Americans everywhere are saying online," Rudinger wrote in an e-mail response to a reporter's questions. "All of this leads to a very chilling environment in which people are afraid that anything they say in cyberspace can be used against them, and this inhibits free speech on the Internet."

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Shaver said he doesn't understand what he did wrong. He said he once helped a student on his bus who was having seizures. "But I'm not a role model?" he said. "Basically, (the MySpace page) has nothing to do with the school."