A federal District Judge of Arkansas Lee Rodofsky ordered the chain store Kroger to pay $180,000 dollars to two employees who were fired after refusing to wear an apron with a “multicolored heart ”, with a phrase that they considered an LGBTQ+ symbol.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit last 14 September on behalf of Brenda Lawson and Trudy Rickerd, the two terminated employees, in the Eastern District Court of Arkansas.
According to court documents, Lawson and Rickerd said that, at one of the Kroger locations in Conway, Arkansas, they were not provided religious accommodations when asked them to wear an apron with a “multicolored heart”.
“The respondent employer refused to consider Lawson’s request for a religious accommodation for his sincere religious belief. The defendant employer continued to discipline Lawson for not following her dress code by wearing an apron that was contrary to her sincere religious beliefs” , the lawsuit says.
The legal document requested a back payment for Rickerd and Lawson and asked for punitive damages. It also asked Kroger to “institute and carry out policies, practices, and programs that provide equal employment opportunities” for plaintiffs.
Given this, the federal judge ordered “to provide reasonable accommodations to employees who have sincere religious objections to the Kroger dress code”. Similarly, ordered the creation of a policy of religious adaptations and training for new employees.
“Both have sincerely held religious beliefs that homosexuality is a sin and that they cannot support or promote it”, said the judge.
A few months ago the media reported a similar dismissal situation, but in the airline industry. In mid-July, a federal judge ordered Southwest to compensate $5,000,000 dollars to a stewardess who was fired from the airline for taking a stand on abortion in a lawsuit by 2017.
Charlen Carter said he lost his job after issuing various publications dissenting from the Labor Union of America after it attended to a women’s march on Washington.
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