![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/prideflagsoldbuilding_unsplash-678x381.jpg\" "\\"prideflagsoldbuilding_unsplash\\"\/")
\n(Image: Teddy O\/Unsplash.com)<\/p>\n
\n(Image: Teddy O\/Unsplash.com)<\/p>\n
The legal saga of Captain Jeffrey Little, a twenty-year veteran of the Los Angeles County Fire Department (LACoFD) and a devout evangelical Christian, about which I previously wrote for Catholic World Report<\/a>, is apparently nearing its conclusion.<\/p>\n Captain Little\u2019s case appears<\/a>\u00a0to be\u00a0ready to head to trial<\/a>\u00a0because a federal trial court in California\u00a0conducted a preliminary hearing on May 15, 2026<\/a>. As officials suspended Little without pay for fifteen days in 2023<\/a>\u00a0after revoking his accommodation not to have to violate his Christian beliefs by\u00a0raising a Pride Flag<\/a>, this article highlights the facts and issues in dispute before offering analysis and commentary.<\/p>\n Little v. The Los Angeles County Fire Department<\/p>\n In March 2023, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors required all of its facilities, including the lifeguard station Little oversees, to fly the Progress Pride flag during June, designated as Pride Month<\/a>. Captain Little requested an accommodation because he viewed raising the flag as an \u201cendorsement and or celebration<\/a>\u00a0of [its] messages \u2026 on marriage, sex, and family [that] are in direct conflict with [his] bona fide and sincerely held religious beliefs on the same subjects.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, he asked that someone else raise the flag. Officials initially granted Little\u2019s request for an accommodation on June 19, 2023, but, without an explanation, rescinded it two days later.<\/p>\n Little claims that in ordering him to raise the flag, a superior officer used \u201cabusive, inappropriate, harassing, and discriminatory language<\/a>\u00a0\u2026 motivated by animus toward [his] religious beliefs.\u201d\u00a0On June 23, 2023<\/a>, officials suspended Little from the Department\u2019s background investigation unit, causing him a significant loss of overtime pay and prestige.<\/p>\n On May 24, 2023, attorneys filed a\u00a0forty-one page complaint<\/a>\u00a0in a federal trial court in California in\u00a0Little v. Los Angeles County Fire Department<\/a>, with almost ninety pages of accompanying materials including a copy of a hate letter containing a\u00a0threat to rape his daughters<\/a>, challenging the revocation of his religious accommodation and suspension without pay because he \u201cadheres to traditional Christian beliefs<\/a>\u00a0regarding the moral illicitness of same-sex activity.\u201d<\/p>\n The allegations include that officials ignored Little\u2019s rights under\u00a0Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964<\/a>\u00a0and California\u00a0Law<\/a>\u00a0by rescinding his request for a reasonable religious accommodation in the form of having someone else raise the flag, retaliating by investigating his having lowered a flag, and not safeguarding him from retaliation, discrimination, and harassment.<\/p>\n Little also charged that officials ignored the\u00a0First Amendment<\/a>\u00a0and similar language in the\u00a0California constitution<\/a>\u00a0protecting his right to the\u00a0free exercise of religion<\/a>\u00a0while infringing on his\u00a0First Amendment speech rights<\/a>\u00a0by attempting to compel him to communicate a message he did not believe and subjecting him to viewpoint discrimination because of his faith.<\/p>\n Little does not wish to block the Pride flag policy. Instead, most notably,\u00a0Little seeks<\/a> a permanent injunction granting him a religious accommodation, exempting him from participating in Pride flag duties, full reinstatement, the removal of disciplinary actions from his record, and damages in the form of back pay, including wages plus benefits.<\/p>\n Analysis and commentary<\/p>\n The reality is that in a nation as divided as the United States is on so many topics, when people do disagree, especially those in the same organization who must work together, they should be able to do so respectfully by avoiding \u201cvehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly<\/a> sharp attacks\u201d such as superior officers directed at Captain Little due to their differences of opinion.<\/p>\n So it is perplexing, even disappointing, that other firefighters treated an officer as senior as Little as harshly as they did both verbally and in disciplining him because he could not, in good conscience, participate in flag-raising activities that violated his First Amendment rights to freedom of religion and speech by having to contribute to spreading a message inconsistent with his deeply held faith values.<\/p>\n At the heart of Little\u2019s case is his right to observe his First Amendment freedoms to the free exercise of religion and not be coerced to engage in speech with which he disagrees. Moreover, as noted, rather than seeking to end flag raising, Little merely seeks an accommodation that someone else be assigned this duty.<\/p>\n Six days after officials suspended him, on June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court rendered what should be a game-changer. In Groff v. DeJoy<\/a>, a case from Pennsylvania, a unanimous Court addressed the extent to which public employers must accommodate the religious beliefs of their employees. At issue in\u00a0Groff\u00a0was a Christian postal worker\u2019s unsuccessful request for an accommodation in the form of being excused from work on Sundays so he could attend church services.<\/p>\n Vacating and remanding earlier judgments in favor of the Postal Service, the Justices found that before employers can deny\u00a0Title VII religious accommodations<\/a> to employees, they must prove that granting such requests would result in undue hardships in the form of substantially increased costs to their operations, a relatively high bar to meet in large businesses with many employees. Applying the rationale from Groff\u00a0in\u00a0Little, LACoFD officials could easily have granted the Captain\u2019s cost-free requested accommodation and avoided unnecessary litigation simply by having another firefighter raise the flag.<\/p>\n Assuming that Little\u2019s allegations are proven truthful, it certainly appears that officials\u2019 harassment and treatment of him during their investigations violated his rights to the free exercise of religion under both the Federal Free Exercise Clause<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0California Constitution<\/a>. Officials violated Little\u2019s rights by discriminating against him due to his beliefs, attempting to force him to act in a manner inconsistent with his faith, a matter that led directly to his compelled speech claim.<\/p>\n As to the related concept of compelled speech, LACoFD officials ignored long-standing Supreme Court precedent starting with 1943\u2019s\u00a0West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette<\/a>. In\u00a0Barnette,\u00a0the Justices upheld the rights of children who were Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses to be excused from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag because doing so was contrary to their religious beliefs. Against the backdrop of World War II and the fight against totalitarianism, the Court declared that \u201c[i]f there is\u00a0any fixed star<\/a>\u00a0in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.\u201d<\/p>\n The Supreme Court most recently banned compelled speech in 2023\u2019s\u00a0303 Creative v. Ellenis<\/a>,\u00a0ruling<\/a> that Colorado officials could not require a wedding planner to offer her expressive services to a same-sex couple because doing so would have violated her sincerely held religious beliefs that marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman. The Court reasoned that \u201c[t]he Free Speech Clause\u2026protect[s] the \u2018freedom to think as you will<\/a>\u00a0and to speak as you think,\u2019\u201d specifying that individuals cannot be compelled to communicate ideas with which they disagree.<\/p>\n Ignoring clear Supreme Court precedent regarding the two fundamental constitutional freedoms of religion and speech, it is unfortunate that LACoFD officials treated Captain Little as poorly as they did. After all, in simply seeking to be excused from participating in the flag-raising ceremony, rather than end the practice altogether, Captain Little demonstrated respect for those whose beliefs differ from his own. Yet, officials failed to show mutuality of respect for his rights. Such respect is, sadly, often sorely missing in such debates in a manner antithetical to rights for which the Constitution stands.<\/p>\n As Captain Little\u2019s case apparently heads to trial, assuming the parties do not reach a settlement (an unlikely occurrence at this point), the presiding judge will hopefully follow clear Supreme Court precedent by protecting the constitutional rights of Captain Little and, by extension, others.<\/p>\n Finally, LACoFD officials should then recognize and protect Little\u2019s rights to freedom of religion and from compelled speech by no longer trying to force him to participate in communicating a message inconsistent with his deeply held beliefs.<\/p>\n If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating<\/a> to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!<\/p>\n Click here<\/a> for more information on donating to CWR. Click here<\/a> to sign up for our newsletter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Image: Teddy O\/Unsplash.com) The legal saga of Captain Jeffrey Little, a twenty-year veteran of the Los Angeles County…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-350774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}