Takeaway: The defendant argued that it could not accommodate the plaintiff because this would violate state law. The court found that federal law has supremacy over state law, and thus the failure to accommodate claim could proceed.
A devout Jehovah's Witness who challenged the oath of the Office of the California State Controller, which pledged loyalty to the California and U.S. Constitutions, could pursue a claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled.
The California Constitution requires all public employees, except those as may be by law exempted, to swear or affirm to support and defend the Constitutions of the United States and the state of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to those Constitutions. In 2016, the plaintiff began working for the California Franchise Tax Board without first signing a loyalty oath.
The next year, however, she applied to the California Office of the State Controller and was offered a higher-paying position. The Controller's Office asked her to take California's loyalty oath. The employee requested an accommodation to sign the oath with an addendum specifying that her allegiance was first and foremost to God and that she would not take up arms.
The Controller's Office rejected the plaintiff's proposed addendum to her loyalty oath. Because she refused to sign the oath in its unmodified form, the agency rescinded her job offer. The...
"The election poster for a Reform Party candidate running for Seoul's Gwangjin District Council is written entirely in Chinese. Is this China?" says part of a Korean-language Facebook post shared ...