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A federal Court of Appeals has upheld a lawsuit leveled by a Christian former public school administrator against a Colorado school district, alleging religious discrimination over objections regarding a pro-homosexual theater performance conducted at a public high school.
The lawsuit stems from the Douglas County School District’s (DCSD) swift termination in 2020 of then Assistant Principal and Athletic Director at Ponderosa High School Corey McNellis, who was fired shortly after objecting on religious grounds to the school’s performance of a play about the 1998 murder of homosexual Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming, which the school’s theater department described as “widely acknowledged to have been a hate crime motivated by Shepard’s sexuality.”
Last week, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals partially reversed a lower court opinion that had dismissed McNellis’ lawsuit, remanding review of the allegation of religious discrimination while dismissing other allegations in the lawsuit regarding First Amendment violations and retaliation on the part of the school district.
Following an October email from the theater department to all school staff announcing the play, McNellis responded by email, asking, “As a Dad of a student here and also as an employee in the school, what is my recourse if I disagree with the production? Was this a heads up to see if everyone was cool?”
The Assistant Principal and father of a family followed up with subsequent emails, in which he stated, “As a [C]hristian I would love to collaborate with your project… Please let me know if the love that Jesus can provide will help your play.”
McNellis also stated that he stood alone within the administration in his objections to the play and its content. “For the record, all of administration does not agree with me on this” he said in an email. “I am totally solo… Forgive me for having a different viewpoint and the audacity to publicly share it.”
McNellis was subsequently placed on administrative leave by the Douglas County School District and investigated for his “religious comments” regarding the play. He complained at the time to the school’s Principal, Mr. Ottmann, and several colleagues that he was facing investigation “based on his Christian beliefs.”
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At the conclusion of the investigation, McNellis was fired in October 2020, notwithstanding his excellent record of fourteen years working at Ponderosa High School. In 2022, after retiring as principal of the school, Ottmann published a letter confirming that McNellis’ objections to the play on religious grounds were the reason he was fired by the school district, a termination over which he himself had no control.
“The contents of [The Laramie Project emails were] eventually the catalyst for his firing, which I thought went too far,” Ottman wrote. “I later learned that a specific group of people ‘piled on’ the complaints about [Mr. McNellis], which played into the decision to ultimately terminate him as a DCSD employee.” He continued,
I truly believe that [Mr. McNellis] was “railroaded” by this specific group of people based on his political and religious views. In my opinion, his firing was unjust and unfair, and unfortunately, even though I was the principal, I couldn’t save him because it wasn’t my decision to make.
In support of McNellis’ claim that the school district discriminated against him for expressing his Christian beliefs in objecting to a pro-homosexual high school play, the court declared his allegations were “sufficient to give rise to an inference of discrimination.”
The judges stated that they based their judgment on the following facts:
- McNellis “is a Christian man,”
- He was “‘qualified to perform the position of Assistant Principal and Athletic Director’ at Ponderosa High School.”
- Throughout the course of his employment with the school district, McNellis “‘consistently received excellent performance reviews’ and had never been subject to disciplinary action.”
- “In a staff email chain, Mr. McNellis voiced his disagreement with the performance of a school play about the murder of a gay college student. He offered to ‘collaborate’ with the school theater department ‘[a]s a [C]hristian,’ citing how ‘the love that Jesus can provide will help [the] play.’”
- “The next day, DCSD informed Mr. McNellis he needed to stay home from work due to his ‘religious comments.’
- “Three days after the email exchange, DCSD told Mr. McNellis he was being investigated and placed on leave due to ‘the religious comments.’”
- “Less than one month later, DCSD terminated Mr. McNellis’s employment, and ‘Defendant directly cited Mr. McNellis’s emails regarding The Laramie Project as the reason for his termination.’”
The court declared that the allegations that DCSD repeatedly invoked McNellis’ “religious comments” prior to their investigation and termination “provide a plausible link between his termination and a discriminatory motive.”
“Under these circumstances, and at this procedural stage, that is sufficient to ‘nudge [his] claims across the line from conceivable to plausible,’” the court stated. The lower court’s dismissal of McNellis’ religious discrimination claims under Title VII and Colorado Anti Discrimination Act has now been reversed and remanded for further proceedings.
