Library Worker Claims She Was Fired
for Wearing a Cross
Former Logan County (Ky.) Library worker Kimberly Draper filed suit February 1 in U.S. District Court in Bowling Green, Kentucky, charging that Director Linda Kompanik fired her in April 2001 for continuing to wear a cross necklace on the job despite orders not to do so. Draper is represented by the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative nonprofit law group founded by Pat Robertson. Kompanik and Assistant Director Sheryl Appling are named as defendants, along with the library itself.
The suit contends that 45 days after she was hired in August 1998, Draper learned of a written dress code policy forbidding “religious, political, or potentially offensive decoration,” although she was assured on being hired that she could wear a cross necklace to work. Because she twice refused Appling’s order in April 2001 to remove the necklace, Kompanik fired her April 16, the suit alleges.
Plaintiff attorney Francis Manion characterized as “troubling” a policy “that equates a religious symbol with being offensive.” Although the library tries to honor diversity by keeping staffers from professing “a different religious point of view” than a patron, Kompanik countered, “it was something else” that led to Draper’s dismissal. “Unfortunately, [Draper] can say whatever she wants,” Kompanik told the Associated Press February 4, declining to elaborate.
Posted February 11, 2002.
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