State Employees Say Boss Judged Them On the Quality of Their Religious Faith

The director of the Ohio Workers' Compensation Council is being accused of religious discrimination by her three-member staff-- two attorneys and an executive assistant. According to yesterday's Columbus Dispatch, Virginia McInerney, director of the Council that oversees the operations of Ohio's Bureau of Workers' Compensation, fired the staffers after they asked for separation agreements because of insurmountable inter-office tensions. The staffers say that McInerney, who often asked them to pray, was judging them "not on professional performance but on the quality of their faith, according to her beliefs." In letters to the state senator who chairs the Council, the three said McInerney told them she believed God placed her in her job and that the source of office conflict was an "inability to recognize her 'divine gift for editing.'"