Bob Unruh turned in yet another low-effort work in an Oct. 20 “news” article:
The U.S. Supreme Court has been asked to reverse the firing of a fire chief who lost his job in Stockton, California, because he attended an assigned leadership conference.
City officials apparently were enraged because the conference was in a church building.
First Liberty Institute has announced it, and others, have joined to ask the Supreme Court for a review of the case involving fire chief Ron Hittle.
[…]The institute explained that Stockton officials fired Hittle after 24 years of service “because he attended a leadership conference hosted at a church. Although the city requested Chief Hittle attend a leadership training course of his choice, it later opened an investigation after he attended Willow Creek Church’s Global Leadership Summit, a world-class conference with speakers from a variety of religious and non-religious backgrounds.”
Speakers at that conference historically have included Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and Bill Clinton.
“The city listed Chief Hittle’s attendance at a ‘religious event’ while on duty as the primary reason for his termination,” the legal team explained.
He sued but a district court took the city’s side.
This being an Unruh work, he couldn’t be bothered to talk to any Stockton official or even do research into its side of the story. Or perhaps he did and chose to censor it because it blew up his narrative. As one observer reported:
Ronald Hittle served as the City’s Fire Chief before he was fired (following an investigation by an outside investigator) because he lacked effectiveness and judgment in his ongoing leadership of the Fire Department; used City time and a City vehicle to attend a religious event and approved on-duty attendance of other Fire Department managers; failed to properly report his time off; engaged in potential favoritism of certain employees; endorsed a private consultant’s business in violation of City policy; and had potentially conflicting loyalties in his management role and responsibilities. Hittle sued the City under Title VII and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (“FEHA”), alleging his termination was “based upon his religion.” Hittle pointed to what he characterized as “direct evidence of discriminatory animus” based on a comment made by the Deputy City Manager Laurie Montes that Hittle was part of a “Christian coalition” and part of a “church clique” in the Fire Department. However, the evidence showed that Montes was repeating what was written in anonymous letters sent to the City and that the comment did not originate with Montes herself. The Court noted that such remarks were in any event “more akin to ‘stray remarks’ that have been held insufficient to establish discrimination.”
Another observer noted the flaws in Hittle’s defense:
Hittle alleged that his notice of intent was direct evidence of discrimination because of its repeated references to the leadership event that Hittle attended on City time as a “religious event.” The Court noted that the notice relied on the findings in the investigation report, which concluded that Hittle attended a two-day event on City time that did not benefit the City because it was not the sort of leadership conference aimed at public sector leadership, and that Hittle approved three department employees to attend on City time. The references to the “religious event” were to show the City’s legitimate non-discriminatory concerns about attending the event on City time and the lack of benefit to the City, and did not show religious animus.
Finally, Hittle contended that the City described Hittle’s attendance at the religious event as exercising “poor judgment” and as “inappropriate activity” simply “for Hittle’s own personal interests.” The Ninth Circuit reiterated that the City had legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons to be critical of Hittle using City resources to attend an event for his personal benefit.
Given that Unruh’s only source for his article is Hittle’s legal counsel, he clearly didn’t want anything to disrupt the narrative (or do any actual work beyond stenography).
WND has done this sort of stenography work for right-wing legal groups before. For instance, it repeatedly portrayed a court-martialed Marine as having been punished for posting Bible verses at her workstation; in fact, the charges against her included failing to go to her appointed place of duty, disrespecting a commissioned officer, and disobeying direct orders from her superiors to wear the proper uniform. The Bible-verse charge was the least of her offenses.