Lawyer: Atlanta chief's firing recalls the Red Scare

The standoff between the City of Atlanta and its former fire chief highlights much more than an employer-employee disagreement. At stake is freedom of religious expression. Former fire chief Kelvin Cochran last week filed a lawsuit in federal court over his firing. He claims he lost his job because of a Christian men’s devotional book he wrote and self-published. Politicians and activists branded the book as anti-gay and said the chief had to go.

Cochran was named Atlanta’s fire chief in 2008, served as President Barack Obama’s U.S. fire administrator for two years, then returned to Atlanta as fire chief after the mayor asked him to do so. Fire Chief magazine named Cochran its 2012 fire chief of the year.

“You know, those principles that I was taught as a kid—faith in God, education, respect authority, and treat other people like you want to be treated … really fed my career success and my life success,” Cochran said the day he filed his lawsuit. Those principles include ideas from the Bible about how people should conduct themselves sexually.

The city disagrees with Cochran on major points, for example, whether the chief got proper permissions about publishing the book, whether he used work time to write it, and whether he distributed his book at work to people who didn’t want it.

What’s not in dispute so far is the fact that Cochran self-published a 162-page book in 2013 for use as a Bible study guide. In part of the book, he calls homosexual behavior a perversion. Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed suspended Cochran in November 2014 and fired him in January. He said he did so because Cochran showed poor judgment and management skills, particularly for failing to secure permission from the mayor to publish the book.

In this case, it will be important to find the legal line between punishing a person’sthoughtsand punishing a person’s actions. If Cochran didn’t actually damage anyone with something he did, what were the grounds for firing him?

Jeremy Tedesco with Alliance Defending Freedom, one of Cochran’s lawyers, compared the case to the so-called Red Scare period of U.S. history. In the 1950s, then-Sen. Joe McCarthy, R-Wis., made a push to root out Communists from government employment. Many people not guilty of anything lost their jobs. Later, court decisions began to compensate those hurt, but the damage was done. And that is how Cochran’s attorneys see what’s happened to their client.

“The core of the case is, the city punished chief Cochran because he holds to and expressed his religious convictions concerning marriage and sexual morality,” Tedesco said. “And they didn’t like what he said, and they don’t like what he believes, and they fired him.”

Reed has said he fired Cochran because he didn’t ask permission before publishing the book, a violation of city policy. But Tedesco said there is no such policy. If there were, it would violate the Constitution.

“You can’t have that kind of prior restraint on people’s free speech, especially when they’re speaking in their private capacity,” Tedesco said.

According to Tedesco, the mayor had a copy of the book for nearly a year and said nothing about it until a few people saw the book and complained. That’s when the mayor suspended Cochran, saying he was doing so because Cochran’s beliefs were contrary to the mayor’s personal beliefs and those of the City of Atlanta. The reason given for firing Cochran in January was the chief’s “lack of judgment.”

“None of those things are true,” Tedesco said. “They’re pretexts. They’re wagon-circling that you often see the government do to try to cover the fact that they’ve engaged in blatant religious discrimination, which is exactly what’s going on here.”

The mayor’s office refused to comment, so I reached out to multiple LGBT legal advocates—more than 20—to get the argument in favor of the mayor’s position. Even the American Civil Liberties Union wouldn’t discuss it on the record. One gay-rights activist did agree to talk with me. Jamie Ensley, the national chairman of the Log Cabin Republicans, is not a lawyer, but he is familiar with the issue, and he lives in Atlanta. Ensley argued that firing Cochran was the fiscally responsible course of action.

“The mayor may have prevented job harassment discrimination lawsuits and saved millions of dollars in judgments the taxpayers of Atlanta would certainly be liable for and have to pay,” Ensley said. He cited a case a few years ago in which the city paid out millions of dollars after police raided a gay bar. But that was for an action, raiding a private business, and Cochran didn’t actually do anything to cause damages.

“He was hired and salary-paid by Atlanta taxpayers to be the fire chief, to lead and manage Atlanta’s fire department, not to be a preacher or a book author,” Ensley said. “He should have been fired and would have been fired in corporate America for doing the same thing.”

Ensley spent the bulk of his career in the banking world, and he might be right about that. But there are different rules for those who work in the private sector and those who work for government. The Supreme Court has ruled employees do not relinquish constitutional rights as a condition of working for the government. Speaking as a citizen on matters of public concern such as marriage and sexuality is protected speech. And speaking on matters outside of one’s job is also protected.

Ensley pointed out that Cochran is accused of handing out the book to people at work, which could be considered job harassment. That is a crucial but disputed factual matter a trial would explore.

I asked Ensley what the LBGT community wants out of this.

“We just want to live our lives and have equality. … And that’s the thing. We’re Americans. We pay taxes. We pay a lot of taxes, and we should be able to have the same rights as anybody else,” he said.

And that’s where the conflict lies. Cochran also is an American who pays lots of taxes and just wants to live his life.

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