Appeals court: Wal-mart can fire worker for telling co-worker lesbians go to hell

[Kathy]

Appeals court: Wal-mart can fire worker for telling co-worker lesbians
go to hell
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/4699034-573/appeals-court-wal-mart-can-fire-worker-for-telling-co-worker-lesbians-go-to-hell.html

BY JAMES SCALZITTI Staff Reporterj...@suntimes.com Apr 7, 2011
2:09AM

Wal-Mart was within its rights to fire a Joliet store employee who
told a lesbian co-worker she would go to hell because God does not
accept gays, and the dismissal was not religious discrimination, a
federal appeals court has ruled.

Tanisha Matthews began working as an overnight stocker at the Joliet
Wal-Mart in 1996, according to court documents. In September 2005,
during a break in her shift, Matthews took part in a conversation
about God and homosexuality.

The next day, an employee informed a manager that Matthews had made
inappropriate comments about gays to a lesbian employee named Amy.
Over the next three months, Wal-Mart interviewed employees who were
present.

In her statement, Amy reported that Matthews was “screaming over her”
that God does not accept gays; they should not “be on earth”; and they
will “go to hell” because they are not “right in the head,” according
to the appeals court ruling. Five other employees confirmed that
Matthews had said gays are sinners who are going to hell, the ruling
said.

Wal-Mart fired Matthews after concluding she had engaged in behavior
that violated the company’s Discrimination and Harassment Prevention
Policy. The policy, which the court said Matthews was aware of at the
time of the incident, prohibits employees from engaging in conduct
that could reasonably be interpreted as harassment based on an
individual’s status, including sexual orientation, and says they can
be fired for such conduct.

Matthews, an Apostolic Christian, sued Wal-Mart Stores Inc. for race
and religious discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
claiming she was fired because of her religious beliefs and not for
violating company policy.

She voluntarily dismissed the race discrimination claim, and the U.S.
District Court in Chicago granted summary judgment to Wal-Mart on her
religious-discrimination claim.

In her suit, Matthews claimed Wal-Mart engaged in religious
discrimination by firing her for expressing religious beliefs. “But if
Matthews is arguing that Wal-Mart must permit her to admonish gays at
work to accommodate her religion, the claim fails,” the Appeals Court
stated in its decision.

*******
Walmart enforced its policy, but what if it had not? Would the
employee who was harassed have been able to mount a successful
complaint? There needs to be a law, the Healthy Workplace Bill,
because it's the person who is bullied who needs protection when
employers don't follow through and fire the bully, or when employers
do follow the law, produce the policy, but the bully continues in
spite of it or more clandestinely.

The decision also shows that a store like Walmart, which really does
cater to a kind of "middle American," recognized in 2005 that this
kind of behavior toward a lesbian employee was wrong and needed to be
stopped.