A number of L.A. county lifeguard towers fly pride flags in support of LGBTQ constituents. Photo: Jeffrey Clayton // Unsplash
A lifeguard captain with the Los Angeles County Fire Department has filed a suit against the department for requiring him to raise the pride flag at a lifeguard station. The suit claims that, by requiring him to fly and work in proximity of the flag, as well as punishing him for taking three flags down, the county discriminated against his religious beliefs, violated his first amendment rights and broke California law.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court May 24, just a week before Pride month, as the L.A. Times reports. It named the county and three chief officers in the lifeguard division. The plaintiff is Jeffrey Little, a Los Angeles County lifeguard of over 22 years, who is being represented by attorneys from the Thomas More Society, a conservative, catholic public-interest legal group known for taking up cases that promote its anti-abortion and anti-same-sex marriage beliefs.
In recent years, Los Angeles County has made a push to raise the rainbow-colored Pride flag at many government buildings, including lifeguard towers. Last summer, Little told his supervisors he wanted to be exempt from raising the pride flag at Will Rogers Beach, where he worked, due to his evangelical Christian beliefs (Will Rogers is notably home to a historically LGBTQ friendly section of beach known as “Ginger Rogers Beach”). According to the lawsuit, he told them that he “adheres to traditional Christian beliefs regarding the moral illicitness of same-sex activity, the immutability of sex regardless of gender identity, and the view that all people are children of God regardless of their skin color.” The suit continued that, “The views commonly associated with the Progress Pride flag on marriage, sex, and family are in direct conflict with Captain Little’s bona fide and sincerely held religious beliefs on the same subjects.”
According to the lawsuit, at the time there were some lifeguard stations that were not flying Pride flags, due to not having the right flag poles, and Little requested to change his shift to work at one of these stations. His supervisors initially approved the request and Little was assigned to a station on Dockweiler Beach that he believed had no flag.
However, Little arrived to find the Pride flag flying at three nearby towers. As the LA Times reports, he was also informed that a chief had dropped off the flags and ordered they be flown. “I was confused [as] to why they were flying as I was under the impression that I would not have to deal with working in these conditions,” wrote Little in the complaint filed June 22. In response, he promptly took down the flags.
According to the lawsuit, the next day Little was hand-delivered an order from lifeguard division chief Fernando Beiteux, telling him to ensure the pride flag was flown through June. The day after that, he was suspended from his role in the department’s background investigation unit, which investigates “emergency incidents” on the beach. The lawsuit also includes a copy of an anonymous death threat Little allegedly received at his home.
This year, with June approaching, Little once again asked for an exemption allowing him to not have to work near the Pride flag. The suit states the county has not “substantively engaged” with his request, and warned him that he risked “discipline and eventual termination for failure to raise the Progress Pride flag.” In addition to compensatory damages, Little is asking for a judge to order the county to give him a “standing exemption” from raising the Pride flag in the future.
