The US Postal Service defeated a lawsuit by a White mail carrier who claimed discrimination, in part because he was treated differently for wearing a MAGA hat than a Black co-worker was for wearing a Black Lives Matter hat.
The ruling Thursday by the US District Court for the Western District of Kentucky partly turns on a rare application of the Hatch Act in the employment bias context. The 1939 law bars civil-service employees in the executive branch other than the president and vice president from engaging in certain types of political activity.
James Halbauer’s July 2020 suit alleged that his Black colleague called him a racist repeatedly after he arrived for work at their Louisville location in August 2019 wearing a Make America Great Again hat. She continued to yell at him even after a union steward told her to stop, and a supervisor later told Halbuaer that he would be escorted off the premises if he wore his MAGA hat again at work, the suit said.
The way he was treated contrasted with the treatment that the Black co-worker received when she came to work about a week later wearing a BLM hat, Halbauer said. She wasn’t required to take her hat off even after he reported it to a supervisor, he said.
That doesn’t show race-based disparate treatment, Judge Greg N. Stivers said. “Halbauer was wearing campaign paraphernalia that he was not permitted...
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