(UPDATED) Federal court declares city's policy unconstitutional.
A federal district court ruled Wednesday in favor of Atlanta’s former fire chief Kelvin Cochran, who claimed he was fired over his Christian views.
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.”
“The government can’t force its employees to get its permission before engaging in free speech,” said Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Kevin Theriot, who represented the former Atlanta official.
Federal Judge Leigh Martin May heard arguments last month in Atlanta regarding the city's 2015 firing of Cochran. The city terminated Cochran, now a staff member of a Southern Baptist church, after he wrote a men's devotional book that advocated in a brief section the biblical view of marriage and sexuality, including that homosexual behavior is immoral.
Cochran has requested that May issue a summary judgment in his favor, while the city of Atlanta has asked the same for itself. At the hearing, May indicated a jury trial is likely in the spring on the issues she may not decide in a ruling she expects to issue in December, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
The case is among of a mounting number involving employees or business owners whose religious convictions about such issues as same-sex marriage and homosexuality clash with the viewpoint of the government.
Southern Baptist religious freedom advocate Russell Moore said Cochran's case “should be of concern to every American, not just to those of us who are believers.” ...
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