NASA Employee Sues For Religious Discrimination After Demotion For Pushing Intelligent Design

According to a release issued yesterday by the Discovery Institute, an employee at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has filed suit in a California state court claiming religious discrimination, harassment and retaliation; wrongful demotion; and infringement of free speech rights. In the lawsuit, information technology specialist David Coppedge alleges that he was demoted for "pushing religion" after he loaned co-workers DVDs that support the theory of intelligent design. The suit was brought against JPL and California Institute of Technology which manages the NASA Laboratory. The Discovery Institute, which takes the position that Intelligent Design is not religion, argues that it is nevertheless illegal for an employer to discriminate against an employee based on what the employer believes to be a religion.