By: Loyd Willaford and Matt Baker
In Sprague v. Spokane Valley Fire Dep’t, a fire department captain was fired for sending emails to his coworkers containing Biblical themes and verses from scripture. The civil service commission upheld the firing as permissible. The fire department captain sued the department in court and appealed to the Washington Supreme Court. The court held that the state agency’s decision against the captain did not bar his lawsuit, and that the captain’s emails were protected by the First Amendment.
In 2011, Jonathan Sprague, a fire captain with the Spokane Valley Fire Department (“SVFD”) formed the Spokane Christian Firefighter’s Fellowship. He began sending emails on the SVFD server and posting on the bulletin board regarding Fellowship activities. These emails and posts often quoted scripture. The emails also often addressed the issue of workplace stress and suicide prevention; a former fire captain had recently committed suicide. Sprague was told to stop posting religiously-themed messages and to stop sending the emails, but he refused. After a series of disciplinary proceedings, Sprague was fired.
A public employee retains the right to free speech at work when he speaks on a matter of public concern and as a private citizen. The emails were not in Sprague’s ordinary course of duty, so he spoke as a private citizen, and the mental health and leadership of a fire department is a matter of public concern. Even with protected speech, a court must weigh the interests of the government against those of the employee. Here, the court found that Sprague’s interests were more compelling than the government’s. In a non-public forum, such as an email server, the government need only show a reasonable and viewpoint neutral justification. However, the restriction was not viewpoint neutral:
Here, (the policy) restricting use of the email system to SVFD business, was reasonable. However, SVFD applied (the policy) to Sprague in a discriminatory manner that was not viewpoint neutral; SVFD permitted the discussion of topics such as suicide, mental health, and team-building over its email system via the EAP newsletters and potential employee discussion, but prohibited Sprague from speaking on these same topics from his religious viewpoint.
The Court held that a government policy may keep certain topics off-limits, but once they are opened to discussion, the government employer may not restrict religious viewpoints. For public employers, this means that speech restrictions cannot curtail religious-based input on a discussion that is otherwise open to debate.
This is an important case on the borderline between free speech and freedom of religion in the workplace. Here, the Court ruled that the employer’s policy allowing discussion of specific topics using its servers could not preclude religious discussion of those same topics. The Court’s opinion raises concerns about whether, and how employers can protect employees from unwanted proselytizing in the workplace using workplace bulletin boards and email addresses. As the dissent points out, it is not clear that the employer had a rule prohibiting religious discussions, rather the department appeared to be trying to avoid the appearance of having endorsed Sprague’s religious views by allowing him to use the Department’s computers to spread them.
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