Will gender ideology again trump religious freedom in California?

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, is apparently nearing its conclusion.

Captain Little’s case appears to be ready to head to trial because a federal trial court in California conducted a preliminary hearing on May 15, 2026. As officials suspended Little without pay for fifteen days in 2023 after revoking his accommodation not to have to violate his Christian beliefs by raising a Pride Flag, this article highlights the facts and issues in dispute before offering analysis and commentary.

Little v. The Los Angeles County Fire Department

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. Captain Little requested an accommodation because he viewed raising the flag as an “endorsement and or celebration of [its] messages … on marriage, sex, and family [that] are in direct conflict with [his] bona fide and sincerely held religious beliefs on the same subjects.”

Instead, he asked that someone else raise the flag. Officials initially granted Little’s request for an accommodation on June 19, 2023, but, without an explanation, rescinded it two days later.

Little claims that in ordering him to raise the flag, a superior officer used “abusive, inappropriate, harassing, and discriminatory language … motivated by animus toward [his] religious beliefs.” On June 23, 2023, officials suspended Little from the Department’s background investigation unit, causing him a significant loss of overtime pay and prestige.

On May 24, 2023, attorneys filed a forty-one page complaint in a federal trial court in California in Little v. Los Angeles County Fire Department, with almost ninety pages of accompanying materials including a copy of a hate letter containing a threat to rape his daughters, challenging the revocation of his religious accommodation and suspension without pay because he “adheres to traditional Christian beliefs regarding the moral illicitness of same-sex activity.”

The allegations include that officials ignored Little’s rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and California Law by 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.

Little also charged that officials ignored the First Amendment and similar language in the California constitution protecting his right to the free exercise of religion while infringing on his First Amendment speech rights by attempting to compel him to communicate a message he did not believe and subjecting him to viewpoint discrimination because of his faith.

Little does not wish to block the Pride flag policy. Instead, most notably, Little seeks 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.

Analysis and commentary

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 “vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks” such as superior officers directed at Captain Little due to their differences of opinion.

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.

At the heart of Little’s 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.

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 case from Pennsylvania, a unanimous Court addressed the extent to which public employers must accommodate the religious beliefs of their employees. At issue in Groff was a Christian postal worker’s unsuccessful request for an accommodation in the form of being excused from work on Sundays so he could attend church services.

Vacating and remanding earlier judgments in favor of the Postal Service, the Justices found that before employers can deny Title VII religious accommodations 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 in Little, LACoFD officials could easily have granted the Captain’s cost-free requested accommodation and avoided unnecessary litigation simply by having another firefighter raise the flag.

Assuming that Little’s allegations are proven truthful, it certainly appears that officials’ harassment and treatment of him during their investigations violated his rights to the free exercise of religion under both the Federal Free Exercise Clause and the California Constitution. Officials violated Little’s 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.

As to the related concept of compelled speech, LACoFD officials ignored long-standing Supreme Court precedent starting with 1943’s West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. In Barnette, the Justices upheld the rights of children who were Jehovah’s 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 “[i]f there is any fixed star in 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.”

The Supreme Court most recently banned compelled speech in 2023’s 303 Creative v. Ellenis, ruling 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 “[t]he Free Speech Clause…protect[s] the ‘freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think,’” specifying that individuals cannot be compelled to communicate ideas with which they disagree.

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.

As Captain Little’s 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.

Finally, LACoFD officials should then recognize and protect Little’s 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.