Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees from workplace discrimination. However, similar to all laws intended to safeguard Americans’ rights, it is only as good as its enforcement.
Unfortunately, religious employees are finding enforcement in their cases wanting.
In California, former Stockton Fire Chief Ron Hittle, a 24-year veteran firefighter, was asked to find a conference on leadership to benefit his role in the department. All the options he considered were beyond the city’s budget constraints and not locally accessible.
He eventually found one that fit the city’s expectations: a world-class leadership conference. The Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit has featured renowned leadership experts, including former President Bill Clinton and former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, among others. Per his superiors’ instructions, he was gifted four tickets and attended the conference along with three co-workers.
Hittle returned from the conference motivated with fresh leadership insights to bring to his team. “How to motivate your team and get them to follow your leadership” and “Development of your staff in utilizing their ideas and making them part of your team” were just a few of the topics covered that he was convinced would help improve the department’s operations. The members of the fire department who attended all testified about the tangible benefits of the practical leadership training they received.
Yet the city barely gave Hittle a chance to put these principles into practice. Someone in the department sent an anonymous letter to his supervisor informing them that the conference was hosted by a faith-based organization and held in a church. The city put Hittle on leave, hired an independent investigator, and ultimately fired Hittle.
Religious hostility motivated Hittle’s supervisors. They repeatedly used pejorative terms, labeling Hittle and others in the department who shared his religious beliefs as the “Christian Coalition” or the “Christian Clique.” They never evaluated the value of the material he learned at the leadership conference. Instead, they accepted the assessment of the “independent investigation” commissioned by the city that characterized Hittle’s “use of City time and a City vehicle to attend a religious event” as a “serious act of misconduct.”
Hittle filed a religious discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which gave him the right to file a lawsuit against the city.
Sadly, neither the district court nor the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit applied the Civil Rights Act fairly in Hittle’s case. Instead, both relied on a judicially invented standard created in a much-criticized 1970s case: McDonnell Douglas v. Green.
In practice, the McDonnell Douglas standard turns on whether the employer’s alleged nondiscriminatory reason for its adverse action (such as its reason for firing an employee) is true or whether it is cover for discrimination. The analysis should be whether the employee has offered enough evidence for a reasonable jury to find that the employer discriminated because of the protected characteristic (religion, race, sex).
The focus on whether the employer’s alleged reason is true or pretextual is not the right question and, in practice, encourages judges to rule in favor of the employer. Indeed, the McDonnell Douglas standard puts a thumb on the scales of justice against employees who bring claims of employment discrimination.
As a result, both courts wrongly ruled in favor of the city without even allowing the case to be presented to a jury.
We are now asking the Supreme Court to review Hittle’s case, shift away from the McDonnell Douglas standard, and restore the right to a jury trial for victims of employment discrimination.
In our petition, we wrote, “The McDonnell Douglas framework is preventing meritorious employment discrimination cases from reaching a jury. When plaintiffs have presented evidence that creates a fact issue as to whether they were discriminated against, they should be permitted to try their case to a jury, period. That is how it works in virtually every other context. There is no reason that plaintiffs in Title VII cases should face the added burden of disproving the employer’s proffered reason for the adverse employment decision. Yet that irrational view holds sway in nearly half the country and is causing demonstrable injustices for worthy plaintiffs.”
Hittle spent 24 years serving his community until he was fired because of discrimination against his sincerely held religious beliefs. We urge the Supreme Court to rule in favor of worthy plaintiffs, such as Hittle, and allow them to have their day in court before a jury of their peers.
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Stephanie Taub is senior counsel for First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit law firm dedicated to defending religious freedom for all. First Liberty represents Chief Hittle. Learn more at FirstLiberty.org.