A man who was fired for refusing to stop displaying Confederate flags in his workplace has lost his bid to revive an employment discrimination suit that said he was discriminated against on the basis of his religion and his national origin as a "Confederate Southern-American."
Curtis Blaine Storey's Title VII lawsuit was brought by the Southern Legal Resource Center, a North Carolina group that, according to its Internet Web site, was founded in 1995 "for the specific purpose of aiding persons whose constitutional and civil rights have been violated in connection with their Southern heritage."
In the lower court, U.S. District Judge David S. Cercone of the Western District of Pennsylvania dismissed the suit, finding that "Confederate Southern-American" did not qualify as a national origin under Title VII, and that Storey had not established that his display of a Confederate flag was essential to maintaining a sincerely held religious belief.
Now the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld that ruling, but the three-judge panel was split on its reasoning.