A former police officer is considering filing a civil rights lawsuit against a Georgia police department after he was forced out of his job for refusing to delete a Facebook post defending traditional marriage.
The possible lawsuit comes as the Supreme Court and some lower courts have become increasingly protective in recent years of constitutionally based religious freedoms.
While employed by the police department in Port Wentworth, Georgia, Jacob Kersey posted an item on his personal Facebook page earlier this year expressing his belief in the sanctity of marriage as an institution between one man and one woman.
First Liberty Institute represented football coach Joseph Kennedy in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. In June 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that a school district in Washington state violated First Amendment religious freedom protections when it fired the high school coach for leading personal prayers at the 50-yard line after games.
On Jan. 3, Kersey’s supervisor directed him to delete the post or face termination from his job. Kersey interpreted this ultimatum as a demand that he choose between his employment and his Christian beliefs. Other officials also ordered him to remove the post. Kersey was advised that as a police officer his free speech was limited.
Police Chief Matt Libby told Kersey that his post about his Christian beliefs was the “same thing as saying the N-word and [expletive] all those homosexuals,” according to the demand letter.
Kersey was given a letter notifying him that he could be fired if he posted any more content on social media deemed offensive. Instead of remaining, Kersey resigned from the department on Jan. 17, having joined the police force the previous May. He refused to delete the Facebook post.
Stephanie N. Taub, senior counsel with First Liberty Institute, said “all options,” including litigation, “are on the table.”
“The first step is we’re offering to meet with the city and the police department to construct a new policy. So we’re evaluating all of our legal options, and we’re starting with this offer to have them do the right thing,” Taub told The Epoch Times in a joint interview with Kersey.
Kersey said his command staff gave him the choice of resigning or “if I went back to work, I would have to agree to their new department policy, which is that I can’t give interpretations, opinions, or my perspective on scripture, even off duty on my own personal time—I can’t do that if it offends someone.”
If he were to come back to work and violate this new policy, which they said they were going to formalize sometime in the future, he would be fired, he said.
City officials told him that they questioned his ability “to perform my job fairly in an equitable manner,” Kersey said.
It is “absolutely absurd that a Christian who has these deeply held religious beliefs, or for that matter, any other person of faith, whether they’re a Jew or a Muslim, who has those deeply held religious beliefs, that marriage is to be a covenant relationship between a man and a woman, that they cannot be trusted, because they have those beliefs, [that] they can’t do their job effectively as a police officer because they have religious beliefs,” he said.
“That’s wrong and that’s the reason why we’re doing what we’re doing to ensure that this does not happen to another police officer, whether at that police department or any other police department,” Kersey said.
Taub said “this is a very blatant violation of the First Amendment” and that Kersey’s case is similar to the one the Supreme Court dealt with in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District.
“That case made it clear that government employees did not give up their First Amendment rights … just by taking government employment. And here it’s even clearer that you have a right to express your religious beliefs … while off duty.”
The city “is really sending a message that Christian people of faith … are not welcome and cannot be police officers unless they want to abandon their free speech rights,” Taub said.
The Epoch Times reached out for comment to the Port Wentworth Police Department but had not received a reply as of press time.
