Lawsuit: Christian Lifeguard Sues County for Forcing Pride Month Commemoration Participation
The lifeguard sought an emergency court order exempting him from participation, but a court denied the application. The lifeguard plans to file a new application soon.
A Los Angeles County lifeguard is suing for religious discrimination and retaliation after he refused to raise a pride flag at his post during Pride Month.
The Christian lifeguard asked the LA fire department, which manages lifeguards in the county, to exempt him from raising the “Progress Pride Flag” (pictured) as required by a recent ordinance and his supervisor’s directives. The fire department has not granted his accommodation request, according to court filings.
Neither the LA fire department nor the individually named defendants responded to Legal Insurrection‘s request for a comment on the lawsuit.
With Pride Month fast approaching, lifeguard Captain Jeffrey Little filed for a temporary restraining order (TRO) on May 28, 2024, asking the court to issue an order barring enforcement of the ordinance and the department’s enforcement memorandum, EA-231, against him before June 1.
The presiding judge denied the TRO application because she wanted to know the outcome of a May 29 meeting between Little and his employer regarding a last-minute accommodation request before granting the TRO. The judge denied the application without prejudice, meaning Little may file again.
Legal Insurrection spoke with Paul Jonna, an attorney at the Thomas More Society representing Little. Jonna told Legal Insurrection he planned to refile the TRO application on June 4 with the additional information requested by the judge.
The challenged policy requires flying the pride flag at government facilities, including lifeguard stations, that fly both the American and California flags based on the number of flag poles and flag clasps available at the facilities. Some lifeguard stations fall outside the policy’s scope because of the number of poles and clasps present.
Last year, the fire department initially granted Little a religious exemption, but rescinded it the next day, according to the lawsuit. The exemption provided Little with several assurances:
(1) movement to a site not flying the Progress Pride Flag; (2) no requirement to raise the Progress Pride Flag; and (3) no requirement to ensure raising of the Progress Pride Flag.
Little was transferred last year to a lifeguard station initially not covered by the memorandum. However, the lawsuit alleges, Section Chief Arthur Lester visited Little’s new station and “modified the flagpoles to attempt to bring them within the ambit of EA-231, and then ordered the lifeguards at each subarea to raise Progress Pride Flags.”
Little arrived at his new post last year with a pride flag already flying, according to the complaint. He removed the pride flag at his new station, resulting in a direct order from Lester “to raise the Progress Pride Flag that he had lowered,” the complaint alleges. The complaint accuses Lester of being “abusive, inappropriate, harassing, and discriminatory” in his demeanor toward Little when delivering the order.
The next day, Lifeguard Division Chief Fernando Boiteux issued a direct written order to Little requiring him to comply with the policy. Boiteux personally delivered the order and, according to the complaint, exhibited a hostile demeanor.
Boiteux allegedly told Little his “religious beliefs do not matter” as “an LA County employee.” The complaint alleges Boiteux, who is a trained martial artist and more physically imposing than Little, “delivered his message to Captain Little in a violent and angry manner while standing over Captain Little.”
Jonna told Legal Insurrection that Boiteux’s behavior and disregard for Little’s beliefs caused Little emotional distress.
Little filed a religious discrimination complaint after his interaction with Boiteux, which allegedly resulted in retaliation, including “suspen[sion] from his role on the background investigation unit” of the fire department. This “result[ed] in a significant loss of overtime, income, and prestige.”
Little also “received . . . a death threat against himself and his children,” which appears as an exhibit in the complaint. The author included a threat to rape Little’s “cute little girls” if Little refused to “pay respect to our pride flag” and “honor us.”
Little again sought an exemption from the policy for the upcoming 2024 Pride Month but, according to the complaint, was unsuccessful.
The complaint makes nine claims under state and federal law, including for religious freedom and civil rights violations.
Little seeks damages for lost wages and emotional distress, reinstatement to his investigator position, and a permanent injunction barring the defendants from enforcing EA-231 against him.
A demand letter sent to the fire department on April 19, 2024, before the lawsuit’s filing, estimated Little’s damages up to that point at nearly $500,000, including lost wages and emotional distress.
UPDATE 6/5/24: Jonna filed a declaration this afternoon that claims the department is granting Little an accommodation for this June alone, removing the need for a TRO. Little still seeks a permanent injunction preventing enforcement of the policy for all future Pride Months. The filing reports a possible protest planned by Little’s fellow lifeguards with similar objections.
The complaint:
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Comments
The article fails to elucidate what category of poofter Section Chief Arthur Lester is.
Ye Gods, there are so many now!
Little should have raised a real ruckus by raising the Israeli flag instead.
Or pissing on the pride flag.
It’s not a religious thing but just forced political participation, to take up.
It is a religious thing, for this man. Perhaps not for you, in which case you can call it what you like.
Such lawsuits are brought under freedom of religion because that right hasn’t been taken away by civil rights legislation, but it actually belongs under civil rights – no forced speech.
I guess only Athiests can demand freedom from religion. Those who have a strongly held belief that being forced to visibly support gay causes goes against their rights.
The LGBT+ (premium package) community has a right to the partner of their choice and their sexual preference. They do not have the right to force others to visibly support it and being forced to forego their religious beliefs.
This is precisely what was predicted to happen, after the hollow and toothless SCOTUS ruling involving Jack Phillips, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
Justice Alito presciently predicted that the difficulty of protecting citizens’ religious liberties against the increasingly obnoxious, bullying and totalitarian antics of the alphabet brigade would lead to religious liberties being brazenly ignored and infringed upon, such as applies to the facts of this litigation.
I go further, to state that citizens shouldn’t have to exclusively assert religious liberty rights (though, they should be able to, if they desire) as a sole rationale for refusing to bow down in obeisance to the alphabet brigade’s agitprop and ideological fealty tests. These antics such as forcing people to fly “pride” flags and to wear patches and buttons, represent compelled government speech; that fact should suffice to allow a citizen to reject participation, if he/she so chooses.
Nobody is being forced to express any opinion they don’t like. But this person is attempting to force the county not to express its opinion. The first amendment is on the county’s side.
There seems to be a misconception that governments are not allowed to have their own opinions, and must be viewpoint-neutral. Every single court that has ever considered this has rejected it outright. Governments, like everyone else, are entitled to their opinions and to express them, and cannot be compelled not to, or to express a contrary opinion.
Viewpoint-neutrality applies only to private speech in a public forum; if a government creates a public forum, even a limited one, then in administering that forum it must be viewpoint-neutral. It can’t allow certain opinions to be expressed in that forum and bar others. That is all. That’s why the flagpole at Boston City Hall, which it has run for years as a limited public forum, is required to allow any flag someone applies for, whereas these flagpoles in LA, which have never been run as forums of any kind, are not so required.
Sorry Millhouse but you’ve got this one back to front. The county is trying to violate Little’s 1st Amendment rights and dictate both his practice of religion and his speech via forced affirmation of something specifically rejected as abomination meriting death in the (Christian) Bible.
If allowed to stand then it also acts as a religious test – no faithful Christian, Muslim, Jew etc would be eligible to be employed by the requirement to support LGTPism.
Little is not trying to prevent the county from having its opinion, he’s simply challenging its right to demand he support LGTPism.
No, George Kaplan, he was not being required to affirm anything. The county is not demanding that he support anything. It’s not his flag and not his flagpole.
The county wants its opinion expressed on its flagpole, and running it up there on its behalf is part of his job that it is paying him for. He has no right to refuse, and forcing the county not to have it flying on that pole would violate its freedom of speech, which is just as important as his.
Suppose you are paid to run a store, and the owner, who is a Democrat, sends you a Biden/Harris flyer and orders you to put it up in the window for him. Is he violating your freedom of speech?! On the contrary, your refusal violates his freedom of speech, and if the government backs you up, and forces him not to have the flyer in his store window just because it offends you, it is violating the first amendment.
The lifeguard asked for a religious exemption from flying the rainbow “pride” flag, and was denied. He wasn’t attempting to stifle anyone else’s speech, only to refrain from being compelled to display a blatant political symbol/standard that goes against his religious views. That’s an instance of obnoxiously compelled government speech.
Yes, he was attempting to stifle the county’s speech. He was not being compelled to display anything; it would not be him displaying it, it would be the county, and it has the right to display whatever it likes. He has no right to object.
“he was attempting to stifle the county’s speech.”
Dumb interpretation of the lawsuit and his aims. Laughable.
No he wasn’t…he asked for an accomodation to have someone else do the task…very simple…just like asking for a Sunday off from a job so you can go to church. The government employers are required to accomodate if they are able to do so..
If all he had wanted was to have someone else raise the flag, then when he arrived at work on June 21 and found it already raised he would not have lowered it. By doing so he demonstrated that his real agenda was not merely to get out of personally raising it, but to have it not fly at “his” station at all. Once he made that clear, the county was correct to tell him that no accommodation was possible.
I am flummoxed that you would conflate private business behavior with government behavior. No matter how much I might disagree with your opinions, I thought you were smarter than this.
OMG! The county does not have a free speech right! How dumb can you get? The county does not have the right to display anything! Government does not have rights! Neither do government employees have rights when they are acting as agents of government, except the right to life.
Is a secular religion any less of a religion than a supernatural religion? I don’t think so. Until SCOTUS correctly classifies “Pride” a religious movement – which it clearly is, at least in part – this will continue to get worse. If there’s simply no appetite to do that, I guess there’s some chance the problem could be remedied by applying some of the anti-patronage judicial decisions of the last 70-years.
It is not a religion at all. The term “religion” in the constitution has a meaning, and this is not it. Nobody in 1788 would have used “religion” in such a manner.
Because LGTPism wasn’t a religion in 1788. But in 1788 religion would have been used different to now. Rather than are you of the Christian religion it would be are you of the Baptist religion or the Presbyterian religion or …
“Religion” in the constitution can only mean what it meant in 1788, just like every other term the constitution uses.
That’s the same argument the left uses when it claims the 2nd Amendment only applies to muskets.
On the contrary. Had the term “arms”, in 1788, meant only muskets, and only later did it expand to include all weapons, then they’d be right that the right to keep and bear arms would apply only to muskets. And if people of the late 18th century had conceived of the freedom of the press as applying only to hand-cranked actual presses, and not to any other means of publishing, then it would still mean that today. The constitution cannot change its meaning just because language changes, let alone because we think we Have a Better Idea.
That is why Bruen said that in order to discover the exceptions to the second amendment, those restrictions that do not infringe the RKBA, we must look to what sort of restrictions people at that time routinely accepted and thought unremarkable. What kind of restrictions they didn’t think infringed the right.
Which is why the Bruen rule doesn’t include restrictions that the people of the time knew damned well infringed the RKBA, but passed them anyway because they didn’t think the people whose right it infringed had any rights worth recognizing.
Maybe. But there are precedential SCOTUS rulings since which have expanded “freedom of religion” to matters of ethics and conscience that have nothing to do with spirituality or a supreme being. Two of those are Torcaso v. Watkins, and US v. Seeger.
Not really. All Torcaso says, in dicta, is that there exist religions that are not “based on a belief in the existence of God”. I think people in 1788 would have agreed that Buddhism and Taoism are religions. They have all the trappings of religions, and are almost unanimously so regarded, both today and 250 years ago.
Seeger says even less. It just clarifies that the exemption from the draft that Congress granted for conscientious objectors was never intended to be limited to those whose objection is religious.
Buddhism is an atheism of Hinduism. So, if Buddhism can be regarded as a religion, so can Socialism.
Progressivism is a strain of Socialism, which Oswald Spengler categorized as an atheism — a secular reaction — against Christianity. In practice, it functions very much as a religion, that is, a shared belief system. It also benefits legally from being a non-religion, despite being the unofficial official religion of the USA, with Harvard as its Vatican.
When talk turns to religion this is often trotted out as the base of the ‘Wall of Separation’
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
And it allows the handwaving away and the ‘but it’s not a religion’ or ‘it’s not a religion as the founders would have understtod it.
But there’s more the Constitution says about religion–
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
This is the part that’s important here. The government is infringing on the man’s right to practice his religion freely by making him appear to support something that his faith, one they DID understand, and some even practiced freely themselves, considers anathema.
The Constitution does not enumerate rights for the government. At all. It limits what the government is allowed to do.
Because it’s purpose is to secure rights for the people.
Take the right to ‘bear arms’. Many use that tired ‘musket’ line. Others suggest that it was expanded later.
They’re wrong.
You have the right to keep and bear arms. ALL arms. Swords, maces, cannon, ALL. There were many cannons in private hands.
The keeping and bearing of arms –not for hunting, but for self defense and fighting– was very limited in the Europe they’d migrated from. People had to win the right to become armigerous.
So the founders knew the peril to the people of a tyrannical government. And eliminated the state being the only legal bearer of arms.
To limit the government to it’s real function, that of securing the rights of the people.
Looks like Lester took a winner and turned it into a loser when there was a good accommodation in place. It looks like religious bigotry.
There was not a good accommodation in place. The facility was too small to fly the flag that the county wanted flown there, so it was unable to express the opinion it wanted to express. The obvious solution was to expand the facility’s flag-flying capacity, so that the county could use it to express its opinion.
Actually, you have it 100% WRONG! But then again, do you ever not know?
“Little was transferred last year to a lifeguard station initially not covered by the ordinance. However, the lawsuit alleges, Section Chief Arthur Lester visited Little’s new station and “modified the flagpoles to attempt to bring them within the ambit of EA-231, and then ordered the lifeguards at each subarea to raise Progress Pride Flags.”
That was the accommodation and it should have stayed, or another station found for this period. Lester seems to have gone out of his way on account of Little’s religious beliefs.
The obvious solution was to leave the station alone, and not change it to intentionally intefere with the man’s previously acknowledged accommodation.
You may now argue with yourself.
You’re either an idiot or dishonest. Having a station that lacks the facilities to comply with county policy is obviously not a desirable situation for the county. The obvious solution to that problem was to install the extra flagpole, so the policy could be carried out as it should be. It had nothing to do with Little; the station was simply being brought up to code, so to speak.
The previous accommodation Little had been given, to be posted to an obsolete station that had not yet been brought up to code, could never have lasted forever. It could only last so long as there existed such deficient stations. If there’s still one left, he can request to be posted there until it’s fixed. Once they’re all gone there is no possible accommodation for him. He can either do his damned job, or quit. Instead he’s asking the court to violate the first amendment by compelling the county not to express its opinion at the site where he happens to work.
Name calling pretend know it all strikes again.
The facts speak for themselves, and show you to be either an idiot or dishonest.
Your narrative sucks, Mr. Pretend to Know it All.
The lawsuit alleges he was targeted. It’s not about the county’s free speech.
Read Paragraph 36 of the complaint, Mr. Pretend to Know it All.
Zero sum games are how teens address things, Mr. Pretend to Know it All.
Sorry, he’s in the wrong here. This is a clear case of government speech. Governments, like anyone else, have the right to form their own opinions and to express them, and not to be forced to express a contrary opinion.
LA County officially agrees with and supports the opinions represented by this flag, and is entitled to fly that flag on its flagpoles. In flying it at his station he would not be speaking for himself but for the county. Anyone who sees it would not conclude that the individual lifeguard supports those opinions but that the county does; anyone who sees a station without the flag would conclude that the county doesn’t support those opinions, or at least would not understand that it does. So if a court were to force the county to exempt this station from flying the flag, that would violate the county’s freedom of speech.
No it’s a clear case of compelled speech. Anyone seeing him attending the station with the flag will conclude it expresses his view or else he wouldn’t be there.
The country is not required to express its opinion. Requiring Little to express the county’s opinion however violates Little’s rights, and those of other prospective employees.
Yep. It’s a free country. He could always quit. If he hoists the flag, he either agrees with the views it expresses, or he at least tolerates them. No one would conclude that he vehemently disagrees with them since there’s no evidence for that. You’d actually have to talk to him, and no rando’s going to do that.
If that’s not obvious, just put the shoe on the other foot — what would people assume were it a Nazi flag?
That’s ridiculous. Everyone knows that random employees at a facility don’t get to run up whatever flags they feel like. Everyone knows that a flag flying anywhere reflects the views of the facility’s owner, not of whatever employees happen to be working there that day.
The county isn’t required to express its opinion, but it’s entitled to do so. And like any employer, it is entitled to require its employees, when speaking for it, to express only its opinions, not their own. They’re free to express their own opinions when they’re speaking for themselves. That’s the government speech doctrine.
If you disagree with that, then you must perforce support those who challenge Florida’s so-dishonestly-called “don’t say gay” law, on the grounds that it violates teachers’ freedom of speech. Do you support them?! I doubt it. But if you don’t, then you must support the government speech doctrine. Little and those challengers are asserting the exact same principle, and you can’t support one without the other.
Thales, if people see a Nazi flag on an establishment they conclude that the owner supports Nazism. If they draw any conclusions about the employees’ opinions on the subject they’re morons.
Guys, Milhouse is probably correct here. The County gets to have ‘expression’ as well. This man is a public employee of the County. The County gov’t flying a political or affinity flag is IMO distasteful and divisive but legal. If the flag was over the County administration building it would not be an argument. No serious person would argue that every County employee in the building supports whatever political/affinity flag was flying. Same for federal employees and all the ‘affinity month’ and affinity group day nonsense flying this or that flag at federal buildings.
The county does not have the right to fly a partisan political banner and mandate such.
Yes, it does. That is what the government speech doctrine is all about.
No, Milhouse, it does not.
Show me in the Constitution of the nation or any state wherein the government is allowed to mandate partisan political opinion.
Show us all, because you seem to be the only one who has found this mysterious statute.
Government entities don’t have rights. Only individuals have rights. Government entities have powers granted to them by the individuals from whom they are empowered.
With that said, in a pure democracy, governments could be granted the power to compel speech, but we don’t live in a democracy, we live in a representative republic. In a republic there are certain basic rights which governments cannot be empowered to breach even with the support of a clear majority. One of them is the power to compel (or restrict) speech.
That is just not true. Government entities have constitutional and other rights, and routinely sue for them, and win.
“As you may have heard, the U.S. is putting together a constitution for Iraq. Why don’t we just give them ours? Think about it — it was written by very smart people, it’s served us well for over two hundred years, and besides, we’re not using it anymore.”
–Jay Leno
“Governments, like anyone else, have the right…”
Governments don’t have rights, they have powers.
You would think that someone such as (ahem) yourself, who comes to a forum such as this, to discuss legal and constitutional issues, would understand that….
I’m homosexual and I don’t want to be in any of these pride events. Compulsory or otherwise. Too many of the freaks come out and make it bad for those of us who just want to lead our lives in a quiet manner.
Unfortunately, leftism always moves leftward. Today, it’s grooming other people’s children. Tomorrow, MAP Rights.
Well-stated, Grizz.
Thank you, Guy. No rainbow flags here. I see pride parades as events that does nothing but set tolerance back 30 years. That’s because it’s the freaks that participate in these things and that’s what the news media chooses to cover. About. The only thing that’s gay about me is the fact that yes, I do like show tunes. The old ones.
Respect!
Undying and absolute respect!
But just a reminder. Show tunes are not just for the gay community.
😏
Leftists are compelled to compel. Being expected to leave other people well enough alone offends them.
^^^ This ^^^
Boiteux allegedly told Little his “religious beliefs do not matter” as “an LA County employee.” The complaint alleges Boiteux, who is a trained martial artist and more physically imposing than Little, “delivered his message to Captain Little in a violent and angry manner while standing over Captain Little.”
__________________________________________________________________
have dealt with a few of these clowns–wanna be “senseis”–the fact boiteux threatened the man ” in a violent manner ” is a dead giveaway for boiteux’s own fear and insecurity–hope the lifeguard wins big
Enough of these silly flags. They are not recognized flags by the government and serve no governmental purpose. They are foisted on society by perverts, exhibitionists and sexually dysfunctional neurotics that have somehow convinced authorities they are normal. They are not. They may not be committing a crime, but that does not make these mentally ill people normal.
In LA County this flag is recognized by the government, and it serves the governmental purpose of expressing the government’s opinion. Exactly like any other flag, including the USA flag, which, if flown at a government facility, expresses that government’s patriotism. It’s not as if governments can be required by law to fly the US flag; if a government doesn’t want to be known as patriotic it doesn’t have to. (OK, maybe state law requires it, but federal law doesn’t and can’t do so.)
I applaud Little for standing up against this government promotion of perversion, and will pray for him!
(Beside the point, but I had to reread the article, because I was confused about the Fire Department having lifeguards, including Lifeguard Captains! :-D)
In Southern California, lifeguards are city, county, or state employees, depending on who owns the beach. In Huntington Beach, the city beach lifeguards are part of the Huntington Beach Fire Department. The lifeguards at Bolsa Chica State Beach are employees of the California state parks. (There are some park rangers at the beach with police powers and guns.)
If burning a flag is an act of protest and thus of “free speech” and therefore protected by the Bill of Rights (at least it was ruled that way in the America I grew up in), why wouldn’t refusing to fly a flag also be considered an act of protest and thus of “free speech”?
This shouldn’t be that difficult to figure out – at least it shouldn’t be for normal, non-leftist people.
Refusing to fly a flag on your own property, or on your own time, is of course an expression of opinion, and fully protected by the constitution. But your employer has the same freedom of expression, and you have no right to prevent him from expressing his opinion, by flying his flag of choice on his property. And if you rope the government into forcing him not to fly it out of deference to your objections, it violates his freedom of speech. The fact that the employer here is a government entity doesn’t change that in any way.
So the employee should take down the flag and burn it. Free speech, donchaknow.
No, he has no right to do that, and if he does he should be arrested for arson and thrown in prison. He has no more right to burn the county’s flag than he does to burn your flag. If he wants to burn a flag, whether this one, the USA flag, or any other, let him buy one and burn it on his own property or in a legal public forum, while complying with the fire regulations.
If you can’t force people to say the Pledge of allegiance, you can’t force them to fly any other flag.
You can’t force people to say the pledge of allegiance on their own behalf. You can certainly force them to say it on your behalf. For instance, public school teachers are required to lead their class in the pledge, regardless of whether they agree with it, because they’re not speaking for themselves. But students can’t be required to say it; and teachers can’t be required to say it in contexts where it would be their speech, e.g. at a staff meeting.
As Howard Beale once pleaded, “Please, please, please, leave me alone”.
Raise it and burn it in protest. There is a SCOTUS ruling on burning a flag and everything.
No, there isn’t. You have every right to burn your own flag, not mine. For that matter you have the right to burn your own cross, on your own property, so long as you comply with the fire code. But you can’t do it on someone else’s property, and you certainly can’t burn someone else’s cross.
Well dang. I was going to suggest that setting fire to the “pride” flag, and then raising it whislt it burned would make eveyone happy. But maybe I just appreciate the cleansing power of fire more than most people.
Little also “received . . . a death threat against himself and his children,” which appears as an exhibit in the complaint. The author included a threat to rape Little’s “cute little girls” if Little refused to “pay respect to our pride flag” and “honor us.”
Gonna go against the tide and say that threat sounds a little hinky. I’m not saying it’s false, just that it sounds a little off to me, especially when followed by “honor us”.
Edited to add: it sounds a little Jessie Smollet to me.
Little should take a page from Mrs. Alito’s book and fly it upside down.
Again, it’s not his flag and he has no right to do that. He should do his damned job, or quit.
…and, like I said, the fact that he hasn’t quit means he’s willing to tolerate it for a lousy summer job.
So… it is your position that if someone is a government employee, he is subject to compelled speech as a condition of “his damned job”? IOW, being a government employee means you have to relinquish your Constitutional rights while on the clock?
Sounds like a religious test for government work: “you must support all our positions or else you cannot work here, your religious beliefs be damned.”
Fits lawfare. If the Left wins a TRO or suit, they enforce the dictatorial judgement with exacting precision and maximum force. When they *lose* a suit/TRO, they promptly act like they won it and snipe around the corners of the agreement or just stomp all over it and force the defendant to go to court again to get a “And we meant it” from the court, which is difficult since the Leftists will lie their (censored) off with “No, we never did that. He’s lying. We would never go against the rules Your Honor imposed…”
There are days when I wish the Muslims would take over the country and enforce Sharia. It would shut down the LGBT+ (premium package) nazis, as well as the liberal female shrews.
At least we will get some peace and quiet (except for maybe the call to prayer broadcasts from the minarets).
/s
TBH I rather liked the call to prayer. I found it incredibly peaceful…. and not just b/c the sniper fire, rocket and mortar attacks didn’t occur during them ….though I definitely needed the time out.
This all reminds me of a business school case study. A restaurant company required all of its franchisees to fly the US flag every day. During a period of political unrest (when isn’t there), a franchisee’s restaurant in an uber-left area was protested and boycotted to the point of near bankruptcy. The assignment was to come up with a course of action the franchisee’s owner could take to best resolve the problem. Class responses were all about communications outreach, establishing committees that included the protesters, etc. The winner? Slip a delivery driver $50 to back over the flagpole and spend a year taking bids to repair it.
This was the inverse of the case study. The station was *only* forced to fly the colorful flag if there was (as I read it) a third flagpole (US flag, CA flag, other thing). The super wasted no time getting a third pole erected and the optional flag up on it, which precipitated this issue. In other words, there was no issue until the super *forced* the issue in a “Bake the cake, hater!” moment that he used like a club against the employee.
The station isn’t “forced” to fly the flag. The station belongs to the county, and the county wants to fly it. It couldn’t at that station only because it didn’t have enough flagpoles. So what do you do when some of your facilities are physically unable to carry out an explicit and important policy? Obviously you fix them as soon as practical, bringing them into compliance. What kind of organization would not do that? It had nothing to do with the employee who had transferred there specifically because it was defective in this way. He certainly had no right to rely on it remaining defective forever!
I understand, but to problem solvers, the problem is not the flag, it’s the pole.
I presume the lifeguard’s attorney will consider whether Shurtleff v. Boston could be applied because the flag is not a government flag.
I think the only flag that should be flown at Lifeguard stations is one indicating water conditions. Anything else could confuse the beachgoers.
On the contrary, the lifeguard will want to distract attention away from that case, because it directly and explicitly supports the county’s position. The entire point of that case was to distinguish between government speech and a public forum. The flagpole outside Boston City Hall has by long-established practice been a limited public forum; the flags flown there have been the speech of various members of the public, and not that of the city. In this case the exact opposite is true; what goes on these flagpoles is strictly controlled by county policy, and represents the county’s own speech. Cf the difference between personalized license plates, which are the driver’s speech, and specialty license plates, which are the state’s speech. Hence the state can impose its own views on the latter, but not on the former.
cant wait until they require that a mus lim praise the state of israel
this has all the trappings of a ” i’m the chief around here and what i say goes” schoolyard disagreement–“how dare an employee try and assert HIS OWN individual rights and threaten my authority”–etc, etc–unfortunately the firechief lacks the maturity or the wisdom to handle such a situation and one of his lackeys (boiteux, the faux sensei) proceeds to THREATEN said employee, DEMANDING the employee’s compliance
end of story
they are hoping he sues
gets some money and leaves them alone
its why the gop MUST defund public schools entertainment etc
as the left,, as long as they get your money,,are in charge
again
why is the government celebrating ANYONES se xuality?????
Because California is gay and retarded.
https://www.facebook.com/fernando.boiteux
Flying a national or state or county flag is within the realm of what the government is allowed to do. It is within the realm of what can be mandated.
Flying a banner in support of a partisan political position cannot be mandated. It can be allowed, but only insofar as all employees are allowed the same freedom.
That is bullshit that you made up this minute, and the exact opposite of the law. A government is entitled to fly, or not to fly, whatever flags it damn well wants to. Employees’ opinions play no role in this, because it’s not their speech.
Every Christmas a myriad of displays goes up on government property. Christmas displays, Channukah displays, Satanic Temple displays, Kwanzaa, KKK crosses, you name it.
Why?
Because it was decided that you cannot mandate one. If you want one, you must allow the others.
Thank you for playing, you can accept your consolation prizes as you leave.
regardless of the government’s ” rights ” they (and individual/corp private businesses) DO NOT have the right to threaten (particularly with physical violence or otherwise) employees or in the same manner attempt to compel employees’ acceptance/promotion of a cause in conflict with an employees’ religious tenets/values–or show me the law that says they do
Listen to Viva Barnes Law for the People. They are a godsend
NRA vs Vullo, was just decided in a case that reinforces the Bantam decision–which does not allow the government to enforce political partisan viewpoints. 9-0
That’d be a mic drop.