Dvoretzky said while an employee can assert both belief and practice discrimination claims, they’d have to prove different elements in order to establish both. In this case, Carter didn’t provide enough evidence to prove that she was fired because she is Christian, Dvoretzky said.
But Carter’s attorney Matthew Brandon Gilliam of National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation pointed to a “fact-finding” hearing Southwest conducted after the union’s president reported the Facebook messages Carter had sent her.
“She [Carter] told them, ‘I’m a Christian, I’m a conservative and I’m pro-life,'” Gilliam said. “Motive is especially easy to infer when the employer knows about the religious belief before he fires her.”
When the judges pressed Gilliam on where the line was between conduct that’s religious and conduct that’s potentially offensive, Gilliam said that Southwest’s investigation into Carter’s posts went beyond what she sent her union president in private.
“The difference is that Southwest went digging on Carter’s website to prosecute her personal Facebook,” Gilliam said, acknowledging that some of the posts sent to the union president were duplicative of ones she posted on her public page.
