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Disclaimer: This article may contain the personal views and opinions of the author.
Change the language, change the culture.
We’ve seen the definitions of words change overnight. We’re told words are violence.
Some words that were never offensive suddenly are in today’s culture.
We’re told that we have to address people using the pronouns they prefer. And if you don’t, you can lose your job in some cases.
Indiana teacher John Kluge refused to abide by a transgender name and pronoun policy in his school district due to his religious beliefs and found himself out of a job.
The teacher asked that he “be allowed” to call transgender students by their last names rather than their preferred first names or pronouns.
The Brownsburg Community School Corporation where Kluge was employed initially agreed to the request but later rescinded it, forcing Kluge to resign.
In his lawsuit against the school district, his legal team maintains that the district violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The act prohibits workplace discrimination based on religion and requires reasonable accommodations unless such accommodations create an undue hardship.
On Friday, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s ruling that the school had not violated his rights.
“This is not the end of the road,” Kluge’s lawyer Rory Gray, senior counsel on legal nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom’s Appellate Advocacy Team, said.
“Mr. Kluge has a few options, which we’re exploring. He can even go to the full seventh Circuit, which is called an on bond petition, or he could file a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court, so he’s exploring his options.”
Another similar case that’s headed for the Supreme Court may get Kluge’s case a second look.
The case Groff v. DeJoy involves a U.S. postal worker who did not want to deliver mail on Sundays because his religious beliefs denounced working on the Sabbath day.
The USPS initially agreed to accommodate Groff and had him take extra shifts during the week to make up for missing Sunday.
The USPS later claimed that finding people to cover Groff’s Sunday shifts created an undue hardship. The organization began to punish him, forcing him to resign.
Kluge’s lawyer said that Groff’s case will allow the Supreme Court to “fix the standard for accommodating religious employees under Title VII.”
If that happens, it could have an impact on Kluge’s case going forward.
“One of the questions in [Groff’s case] is actually what the standard should be for religious accommodation under Title VII. What is undue hardship?
“And so we are hopeful that the Supreme Court will fix that and mean that undue hardship actually stands for something. It isn’t just a tiny little inconvenience, it’s an actual hardship that’s undue,” he said of the case Wednesday.
“If they do that, if they change the standard, Mr. Kluge’s case will have to be reexamined,” Gray added.
“It’s important to remember here that public schools really can’t force teachers to abandon their religious beliefs, and that’s what Mr. Kluge’s case is all about,” he concluded.
Why should an employer be allowed to tell someone they have to abide by a policy that goes against that person’s religious convictions?
Americans have stood by and let freedoms be stripped away little by little. Is America still the land of the free? It’s looking less and less so.
