Grad student booted for sharing her faith outside of work hours
Because she shared her faith with co-workers during lunch breaks and after work hours — and because she refused to sign a document agreeing not to do that — a Christian woman in California has been terminated from her internship with the Department of Children and Family Services and threatened with expulsion from a graduate program at Cal State-Long Beach.
The document the school had asked Jacqueline Escobar to sign also included a statement admitting she had “an inability to separate her religious beliefs from her role” as an intern.
Consequently, Escobar’s legal representative — the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) — filed a federal lawsuit on her behalf against the DCFS. Escobar, according to a press release from PJI, demonstrated outstanding academic and work performance but “came under scrutiny” for sharing her faith while an intern at the DCFS.
That state agency, says PJI president Brad Dacus, “has no business telling an intern that she cannot share her faith during non-working hours.”
The attorney says he is confident a federal court will “cut off [the] muzzle” that the agency has used to silence his client. [Jody Brown]
