Judge Challenges Atlanta Policy Used to Fire Christian Fire Chief over Devotional
In Cochran v. City of Atlanta, the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia said that the city’s restrictions on non-work speech, which were used to terminate Cochran, “do not set out objective standards for the supervisor to employ” and do not “pass constitutional muster.” CToday
OK, on one hand, the judge said the city didn’t have a coherent policy in place that could be applied, and city officials explicitly noted religious viewpoints as a reason for his termination, but the court apparently did not find religious discrimination….I don’t have the time to go through the full opinion, but suffice it to say “how does that work?”.
Weirdest is that the city punished the man for using his title—which would, of course, be something almost any author would put in his bio on the back of the dust jacket. As the court noted, if consistently applied, it would be a prohibition of publishing without prior consent by the city.
As far as I can tell, this does not grant relief to Cochran, but merely orders that the charge of wrongful termination and such can go to trial on the grounds that the city’s prior restraint on the chief’s publishing does not pass legal muster.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Discussion