Paul Ostapa had a problem.
In the summer of 2022, he was on the job as a heating and air conditioning technician in upstate New York with a couple of colleagues when one of them left, leaving him alone with a female co-worker. For years, he’d abided by the so-called Billy Graham Rule — vowing never to be alone with a woman who was not his wife.
Not wanting to make a fuss, Ostapa finished his work and left as soon as he could. When it happened again, Ostapa complained to a dispatcher, saying his bosses had previously agreed to accommodate his beliefs after hiring a female technician.
That led to a report being filed with human resources by the dispatcher — and eventually to Ostapa being fired.
Now he’s suing, alleging his employer, the air-conditioning giant Trane U.S. Inc., violated his civil rights by failing to accommodate his religious beliefs and then fired him because of those beliefs.
Both the failure to accommodate and his firing, which Ostapa’s attorney described as retaliation, were violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the complaint alleges.
“There is a direct and causal connection between Paul’s sincerely held religious beliefs, his request for those religious beliefs to be accommodated, and Defendant’s adverse employment actions against Paul,” Ostapa’s lawyer wrote in a mid-October complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.
In an email, a spokesperson for Trane said the company was aware of the lawsuit but could not comment about ongoing litigation. According to the complaint, the company has claimed that Ostapa was fired for insubordination, rather than religion.
The complaint alleges that for most of the 15 years he’d worked for Trane, he’d had mostly male colleagues as technicians. When he learned a female technician had been hired, he went to his boss, identified as a Mr. Audette in the complaint, and detailed his beliefs and asked for an accommodation.
At first, according to the complaint, Mr. Audette allegedly laughed off Ostapa’s concerns, saying the new staffer was a lesbian, and so there would be no worries.
“Paul quickly retorted that his sincerely held religious beliefs based on Scripture must be obeyed irrespective of the woman’s looks or sexual preferences and that they were not contingent on the potential for sinful conduct,” the complaint alleges. “As Scripture compels Paul to believe, his presence alone with a woman carries with it the appearance of evil from which he is to abstain.”
Kristina Heuser, an attorney for Liberty Counsel, a Christian legal group, said that Ostapa worked mainly on commercial projects, rather than residential ones, and that his beliefs had never caused a conflict with clients. Heuser said her client had made a verbal arrangement with his supervisor, but nothing had been put in writing.
