In Little v. Los Angeles County Fire Department, (CD CA, Jan. 25, 2025), a California federal district court allowed a Fire Department captain assigned to the Lifeguard Division to move ahead on certain of his Free Exercise, Title VII and state anti-discrimination law claims after the Department revoked his previous religious exemption from the County's directive to fly the Progress Pride Flag during LGBTQ+ Pride Month. The suspension of his accommodation was triggered by his removing Pride flags that had been put up in an area to which he was assigned. The court said in part:
Little is an "Evangelical Christian with traditional and orthodox beliefs on marriage, family, and sexual behavior and identity."...
[T]he Fire Department granted Little's accommodation request and agreed that, for the remainder of June, Little would be assigned to facilities that were incapable of flying the Progress Pride Flag due to insufficient flag clasps....
Little alleges that his request for a religious accommodation was protected activity, and that Defendants retaliated against Little for seeking that accommodation by suspending him from his role on the Background Investigation Unit....
... [T]he pleading here gives rise to a sufficient "suspicion" of religious animosity to warrant "pause" before dismissing Little's neutrality claim as implausible.... The FAC alleges that Chiefs Boiteux and Lester knew that Little had been granted a religious accommodation and conspired to undermine that accommodation by bringing additional flag poles to the Area 17 sites so that they would be required to fly Progress Pride Flags in time for ,,,Little's scheduled shift there....
However, the court rejected other claims by plaintiff, including his free speech claim, saying in part:
Because Little has not shown that the speech at issue is anything other than government speech, he has failed to state a viable compelled-speech claim under the First Amendment....
