you know we talk about freedom of speech and that it's what makes america great we talk about the need to weave scolds virtues around the world and that we talk about freedom of religion in this country and that we all should have the right to exercise our religious beliefs as we believe that and we believe this case is about those issues those issues form the bedrock of our national existence we know that anyone whatever their religious belief in the united states whether it's a hindu  buddhist a christian a muslim that they have the right to believe what they believe is correct about god and they have the right to express those beliefs in a way that's appropriate these are sinful freedoms in our society it doesn't make any difference whether it's on the street corner or in the workplace they should be able to state their religious beliefs so it's a public policy of our nation and of the states and it demands that every person be allowed to not only believe what they wish about god but share that belief with others telling me in the workplace that you would say that you can march out and say where men should stay and hound and they're an abomination to god and man  and they are an evil thing to have and there should be no toleration of homosexuality in the work in in the world much less the workplace you can say that no i'm not so you can say that or even if your religion  that your religion says and whatever we believe you should proselytize and she announced it everywhere make it part of your life even sell you should be able to do that is that right well i think there are limits i think the homosexuality is an abomination before god and is a great evil despite this silly he's added to the contrary that's what i think and i should be able to say it right that's peterson that's right out of a sense of demeaning and harassing his colon qualities i mean the court held specifically that that was the problem with what mr peterson did it wasn't his sincerely held religious belief it was how he attempted to go out to attempt to reach your coworkers and somehow change their sexual orientation or make them understand that what they were doing was wrong she answered the request of an employee who came to her asking for person came through or no i believe that would stop the agree to disagree you know i think what they what she had me know her was that she was a christian and they understood she understood that kelly was a lesbian clearly understood that she was a christian they  knew that i think that was the extent of their real conversations prior to the time that kelly came to her with all of these problems and asked for her advice not that is carson's direct supervisor that's correct and their response to the counseling very important and that's the reason we believe the court heard below was that they did not term in the facts in the favor of our client carson came to vote it with these with this turmoil in her life she was having all these problems and she wanted her advice she asked her for her personal advice and the records clear that told her look you know she talked with her about it for a while and then she said look if you want my personal opinion i mean i can give it to you but you know that i'm a christian and you know what generally what i believe she said yes and she said well i'm not you are you asking that i freely give you my personal opinion she said yes absolutely as with the record so it would actually over her beliefs about god and about what the bible says and that that was a central belief of her faith but she also shared with her not just that homosexuality was deemed by the bible to be soon but that a lot of things worse than lying cheating stealing and that better self with the center and it had a lot of problems in her own life that way and had kind of turned her life around because of her christian beliefs and in fact kurson asking to see the lines of that you seem to be so common and have be so happy and have such homeless in your life and that was her explanation to her she didn't go out of her way to say you know you come here i've heard that you're a lesbian and i've got a problem with that and you know we need to talk about it totally not the facts of this case and in fact that the facts of the court failed to take into consideration prayed and carson says she cried she felt better afterwards she thinks comes to bow down over a period of six months almost daily and talks to or constantly about her personal life about the changes she's making in her life but the fact that she's gone to church she asked what it will take her to a real motivational is but certainly she indicates that she is confident that explanation is certainly system with her explanation at the exit interview and why she didn't complain about life it was always carson coming to her and talking to her and asking questions and bringing up the discussion so they were all initiated by by the employee and i think that's the difference in these things the employees sense and listen stuff going on in our office where people retire employees that you're bad because of your sexual orientation because you're a lesbian or you're bad because you're a woman or i was being put upon by my supervisor and i was having to do things because my supervisor said so and i had to listen to my supervisor said because he's my supervisor just like people come in and say things like well the reason i that in our workplace and i think you saying no you have to accommodate somebody is religion who wants to do that so look my religion is i want to tell people because you're a lesbian that's a bad thing an evil to be evil like stealing and all kinds of things to be a lesbian and i want to do that and you must accommodate my religion because my religion tells me that i think that's what you're saying despite the fact the employer  couple of ways number one i think the law's clear and the circuit it's clear that for an employee such as carson to pursue a claim for harassment whether it's sexual harassment or just hostile workplace environment she would have to show certain things and they are one that she did suffer some kind of adverse employment action which never happened in fact the evidence is clear that bobette gave her the highest possible recommendation as her supervisor and recommended her for a promotion to help her get a new job situation in other words she has to either go to human resources she doesn't talk or supervisor because she thinks it will affect her job she can go to human resources she can go above the supervisors where they had a process or through which she could have complained a gr but i think you said as soon as the employers with whoops what's this person doing now they have to accommodate but now or else they violate their religious rights well then you get a board that notice that something she's doing is violating the company's policy well i don't know that there's anything like that anywhere in the in title seven or anywhere else but you have to give notice that if you if you sexually harass somebody that violates the employer's policies or if you otherwise harass them  an issue was when her supervisor and human resources woman came to her and said is it true that these things happened several months ago with this employee and she said yes that's the first noticed that there was a problem now did they offer he corrective action policy which is part of the company's company's employment manual that they have these coaching staffs and they're supposed to be verbal leave now insular and then do a written plan and all those things idea that any of my comments run welcome i don't never said another word to her this is directly opposite of what happened in the peterson case in peterson the kingdom said you can't put up these posters you need to take them down and he refused and they said i believe the evidence was at least four meetings with mr peters and with management trying to get him to work out some kind of a deal that he could be comfortable with exercising his religious beliefs and then he finally gave him time off with pay for letting think about it and let him come back to work and he still put the posters back up you're close to the into your time on me want to save a little bit for rebuttal thank you i would like to thank you for your good counsel  that kelley carter may cost was never pursued as a failure to accommodate case by the point that it has always been argued in pursuit as a disparate impact case under the the fort because judge duncan below said there was no ninth circuit authority on this one engine and also some has i think the peterson case also addresses how to handle a disparate impact case as well we just want you to to be aware of it that's all let's let's start off the top this was a seventeen year old seventeen year employee yesterday dismissed after a thirteen you know this just flat out fired after a thirty minute meeting with with superiors yes who had decided in advance of the meeting that if she admitted the essence of what carson had reported she would be terminated that's correct and up until the point of the unfair manner because of her religion either there was nothing up until that point and as her supervisor of both debt had consistently given carson exemplary ratings yes your honor in which she found out but was a promotion in sour that's correct and cox is manual includes what your opponent referred to as a requirement of constructive discipline or whatever label you want to put on it there's no requirement that all the steps in the constructive discipline or that kind of process actually take place in fact it actually says under certain circumstances immediate termination will be considered the appropriate res and harassment of a coworker is one of those things so you also have the issue of whether there was any contractual obligations related to cox's progressive discipline policy or whether that was simply one of it options and under the employment protection act in arizona that would not be contractually binding on either of the parties so it was simply a process that was there that people could go through under the appropriate circumstances a description  lunch where she is talking to miss carson about what has happened what's made you unhappy what's made you want to leave and ms carson for the first time goes through this litany of events that has caused her to be uncomfortable we pray and we pray for the are too great we went to church she made clear to me that my sexual orientation and lifestyle was incompatible with her religious beliefs yes and that's it and is under the villa remove versus aloha airlines case or cases like el rod versus sears when it comes to evaluating whether there's been a nondiscriminatory re for an adverse job action it's what the employer has a reasonable belief about whether it's objectively false or not as the court said in the case even if the accuser eldred had been lying through their teeth about his alleged sexual harassment it's what the employer reasonably believed at the time that made its decision with respect to the job action that that's important so even if we might have differing reports it got from this carson and the other investigation it did as far as interviewing the other employees who had been direct reports to ms will debt that she had violated the general harassment policy whether miss carson actually would have had a because that doesn't make a difference makes no difference at all what makes the difference is what costs understood have been going on and it's reasonable belief that that activity violated its general harassment policy i think it is the legitimate  the district court didn't i just don't think that's enough i think that's simply reflective of merial the brokers legitimate concern based on what she was hearing from kelly carson that there were problems here i mean we can posit this in a lot of different ways you know somebody using a very negative racial epitaphs in the workplace just once by itself may not create a hostile work environment for the employee to whom it is directed but the company w certainly be entitled to take disciplinary action against that person because all of the title seven cases including cases like character try to teach us as employers that you need to take preemptive action when you know there is some problem out there you need to take steps to fix it you can't let it fester you have to do something so whether kelly carson was truly working in a hostile work environment is not the key the key issue doesn't even matter i mean your example wouldn't even matter whether it was a hostile work environment or not or perceived to be a hostile work environment by the state employee just plain so if you know i've decided to fire you because you made that comment isn't that just the end of that by itself that is it's only when the employee who's been fired says you did that for some other reason that's not the reason you just stated so here are the employers you you admit you did x y and z we're just not going there somebody who does x y and z is fired that's all now here in the argument from your opponents they said yes clear that what the employer understood was going on plus we also have cases that say it's not this court's job to decide what the cox acted appropriately under its own policy you're not a super personnel board you don't make the final decision cock was allowed allowed to make that final decision as long as it did not do so in violation of title seven it's allowed to make that decision now we've treated religion slightly differently and that's what we're  g they haven't actually alleged or argued accommodation correct but it sounds like a combination is where they're coming from some how well it would or is the argument here that that she was discriminated because once they heard that there was a religious reason the religious reason is the reason they fired her as opposed to what she said was the reason they fired is that with the argument i think that's correct if the argument is if  they had heard that she made all these statements because she's a good march this then marxist don't like lesbians as shown by what went on in soviet union harassment policy was and its attempts to take appropriate steps to prevent any kind of further problems that might come come down the road whether what this book that had done actually with allowed kelly carson to bring some type of the evidence is clear that she counseled one on one one person regarding issues that person brought to her her testimony is that it soon as she became aware which is the date they came to her and fired her that there was a problem she said i'll never talk about it again i would never do that so what problem were they addressing what were they halting what issue were they dealing with by firing her i mean she wasn't even going to be working for any more cars and had already taken the promotion they agreed she was going to omaha she would not even be working for bobet at the time that they fired so it sounds like you are talking about accommodation what we are talking about accommodation and it and i guess the reason we didn't argue it initially is because this wasn't the normal accommodation case it was attempting to exercise some religious beliefs like the building case where she wanted to take sundays off and they were not letting her do that in this case it all came up at one time right when she was fired i mean the thing i think analytically about this case for me is that you would expect to see to be as either a combination or a sort of construct that wrongful discharge case under state law but not that it's tough to for me to see a classic discrimination case so much you're resting on the exorcist it's clear that their decision couldn't have been based upon the fact that they believe this employee had been harassed because the evidence of harassment just isn't there so then the question is well then why did they fire and get the exorcism comment and you got the fact that when pressed mr brucker who was the person who made the final decision to fire when pressed in deposition she said well it's because she said they were that the bible teaches that homosexuality is a sin and that's why we fired because that's because of that statement that's what it came