Legal Docket: Bringing faith to work

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Monday morning and a brand new work week for The World and Everything in It. Today is the 17th of July, 2022.

Good morning to you, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s time for Legal Docket.

We’re spending some time this summer talking to Christians who are defending their first-amendment rights.

First Liberty Institute is one of the religious-liberty law firms helping them, including this former firefighter.

HITTLE: My name is Ron Hittle, formerly fire chief of the city of Stockton for 24 years.

EICHER: Stockton, California. Hittle was chief the last six of those 24 years, right up to the time he was fired in 2011 for attending a Christian-affiliated leadership conference in 2010.

Ironically, it was Hittle’s deputy city manager who encouraged him to take leadership training. Hittle noticed an ad in a business magazine for the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit. Turned out it was close by, so he signed up and placed the two-day event on the public city calendar.

Meaning, his supervisors received notice.

REICHARD: Hittle paid his own way and took the training along with three staff members. He says it was useful in several ways:

HITTLE: I think Jack Welch was probably one of the best speakers we had that night. He was the GE CEO, you know, and kind of brought them out of where they were going in a bad direction. And, and it just the principles that I learned their really not only just from the, I would say the secular speakers, but from the religious leaders that were a part of that was just how, first of all, how you're going to run a business, how you're going to treat your people, how you integrate their ideas and thoughts into your business plan at times, and how to bring people together. I learned a lot of things that day. And so yes, I was encouraged and I still believe I got the best training I've ever gotten on those two days.

I called the City of Stockton to provide its side of the story, but got no response. No surprise. Oftentimes, parties to litigation have too much to lose by talking to media. So I looked over Stockton’s legal filings to glean its point of view. From documents I reviewed, here’s the city’s position: put most simply, Hittle violated regulations that prohibit employees from going to religiously themed events on workdays.

HITTLE: And one thing led to another and there was a number of things that happened. I was put on leave and a whole bunch of items that were said that I had done. And specifically one that I had taken a couple of my deputies and captains to a religious leadership conference, Willow Creek Summit. And it got out there that I had taken them to this on duty. And the next thing I knew I was under investigation and ultimately fired for taking them there and myself.

On the list of things the city said he’d done wrong, the top five had to do with attending that religiously-affiliated leadership training. The others, Hittle told me, had already been handled to the satisfaction of HR.

EICHER: So Hittle sued in federal court for religious discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. But the district court ruled against him, and denied him a trial by jury.

Now he’s appealed, and First Liberty Institute represents him before the U-S Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Stephanie Taub is senior counsel at First Liberty.

TAUB: If you look at the reasons for the terminations, the primary reasons, the ones that they flag first and second, are you're attending this conference. And you look at the investigation report, and there's all sorts of findings that “oh, you should have known better because when you came to the conference, it took place at a church and that should have flagged you to you that this is inappropriate.” But it's absolutely not the law that employees have to hide their religious identities, that you can bring your whole self to work if you're anything— except for if you're a Christian.

REICHARD: Hittle and his lawyers are asking the appeals court now to overturn the lower court opinion and let his case go to trial before a jury.

First Liberty has some other religious-liberty cases in the pipeline. Take the employment discrimination cases of two flight attendants on Alaska Airlines, Laci Smith and Marley Brown.

Taub explains what happened to them in February 2021:

TAUB: So Alaska Airlines posted on their internal messaging board, "Alaska supports the Equality Act." For those who don't know about this legislation, so it is legislation that would open up private spaces to people that are not the same biological sex. It is legislation that would curtail the applicability of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

EICHER: The Equality Act is proposed federal legislation that would add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes to several federal laws.

Alaska Airlines solicited employee comments on the internal message board about the Equal Opportunity Act.

Court documents show the airlines assert that questions the women asked violated the company’s anti-discrimination policies. The airline says they were harassing, discriminatory, and offensive.

REICHARD: I contacted Alaska Airlines for comment on this story, but didn’t hear back.

According to court documents, the airline promoted the idea that employees could have respectful conversations with the company and that different viewpoints are welcome. That’s why flight attendants Marley Brown and Lacey Smith felt comfortable asking questions as they did.

TAUB: They thought, Oh, well, maybe the company will take down their question if if they stepped out of line. And Marley said, What about the effect on religious freedom? What about the effect on women's safety in private spaces? And Lacey asked, do they think is it the company's place to regulate morality? And so these are very simple questions. And but just for asking, just for daring to question, they were fired.

EICHER: It is telling that in 2021, Alaska Airlines announced its commitment to a “more inclusive workforce.” Quoting the language directly: “..we believe every person deserves respect regardless of race, ethnicity, capability, age, gender or sexual orientation.”

Maybe you noted what’s missing in that list: religious belief.

REICHARD: The flight attendants sued the airline in May 2022 for religious discrimination and also their union for failing to defend them. That case is pending in district court in Washington State.

A final dispute you’ll hear about today: a nurse practitioner at CVS who was fired for her religious beliefs.

Robyn Strader’s religious beliefs do not allow her to prescribe abortifacient drugs or contraception. CVS accommodated her for years.

Then suddenly, a change in leadership:

TAUB: And they decided, oh, no, we're not going to honor these religious accommodation requests anymore, even though had been working great. Hardly anyone came in to ask for this sort of service. This is not the what she did. If there was if anyone did ask for those service, they just refer them to the other MinuteClinic practitioner or the Minute Clinic across the street, functionally across the street. And so this is an account religious accommodation that worked, but CVS MinuteClinic didn't want to honor it.

REICHARD: Strader with First Liberty’s help filed a lawsuit in federal court in January of this year.

It’s still early in this case, but the recent Supreme Court decision in Groff versus DeJoy, Postmaster General will likely help her. All nine justices agreed that employers must show more than an “undue hardship” on the business. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Acts requires an employer to show the burden of granting an accommodation would result in substantial increased costs.

That decision doesn’t cover every factual situation that might arise, but it’s a message to employers to take religious accommodation requests seriously.

EICHER: First Liberty Institute lawyer Taub says that legal correction comes at a good time.

TAUB: If you look at the EEOC statistics themselves, last year, there was six times as many charges of religious discrimination as there was the year before. So religious discrimination in the workplace is exploding over the past few years. We're seeing that from denials of religious accommodations, from employers not taking these concerns seriously. From increase in woke corporations trying to root out Christians or people that hold different religious beliefs on moral issues. This is an increasing trend. It's a major battle front right now in the fight for religious liberty, the fight for religious freedom for Americans.

REICHARD: And that’s this week’s Legal Docket!

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.