Appeals Court Rules Against Dave Ramsey’s Company in COVID-Era Religious Discrimination Case

Dave Ramsey
Dave Ramsey hosts "The Ramsey Show." (Video screen grab)

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Eugene Volokh, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford and a long-time UCLA law professor, was skeptical about the Sixth District ruling. Volokh, who often discusses First Amendment cases at “The Volokh Conspiracy,” his long-running legal blog, said that Amos would have to prove that religion was at the heart of his trouble with Ramsey.

An employer, Volokh said, could have secular reasons for disagreeing with vaccine mandates or other COVID-related restrictions. If that is the case, then religious discrimination is not involved. Nor would it matter if an employer’s skepticism was motivated by religion.

He also said that most religious discrimination cases are more straightforward — for example, if someone is fired for their religious identity or if an employer fails to offer an accommodation to a religious employee for their religious practice.

Determining if a secular firing decision — a disagreement over COVID rules — was motivated by religion is more complicated, he said. He said that the court may suspect that agreement on COVID was used as a kind of religious test to screen out the wrong kinds of Christians.

“You don’t go along with our views on COVID — well that means to us that you are not our kind of Christians,” said Volokh, speculating on what could constitute religious discrimination in a case like this. “And therefore, we are really going to fire you because of that.”

That kind of approach would be harder to show but could constitute discrimination.

Ramsey Solutions has faced a series of lawsuits and controversies in recent years — largely from staff who have run afoul of faith-based rules about sex and gossip — including an ongoing lawsuit filed by an unmarried employee who was fired after telling her boss she was pregnant.  In that case, Ramsey argued the employee was fired for breaking a rule that barred all unmarried employees from having sex — rather than for being pregnant.

The company is also dealing with a class-action lawsuit prompted by its ties to a troubled time-share exit company.

Ramsey did get some legal good news this week. The appeals court upheld a lower court’s ruling dismissing Amos’ fraud claims. Amos had claimed leaders of Ramsey Solutions promised a “drama-free” work environment and had dismissed concerns that Ramsey Solutions had a “cult-like” work culture and was run more like a church than a company. Amos alleged he had moved from California to Tennessee based on those assurances, which he later claimed were untrue.

The district court ruled that Amos knew there had been complaints about Ramsey Solutions but did not do enough to vet those complaints. Instead, he had relied solely on assurances from leaders at Ramsey Solutions.

“Amos even avers that he was put on notice that Lampo’s statements about the company were potentially inaccurate,” the appeals court ruled. “According to his complaint, Amos’s only real attempt to investigate or guard against rumors about Lampo’s workplace culture was to ask Lampo employees about it.”

This story has been updated.

This article originally appeared here.

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Bob Smietanahttps://factsandtrends.net
Bob Smietana is an award-winning religion reporter and editor who has spent two decades producing breaking news, data journalism, investigative reporting, profiles and features for magazines, newspapers, trade publications and websites. Most notably, he has served as a senior writer for Facts & Trends, senior editor of Christianity Today, religion writer at The Tennessean, correspondent for RNS and contributor to OnFaith, USA Today and The Washington Post.

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