ACLU Fires Suit On Behalf On Former Mississippi Corrections Officers Fired After Supervisors Found Out He Was Gay When Responding To His 911 Call For Domestic Dispute

CommonDreams.org reports that the American Civil Liberties Union Monday filed a lawsuit in a Hattiesburg, Mississippi court against the Forrest County Sheriff’s Office, Chief Bolton, Sheriff Billy McGee, and Staff Sergeant Brannon acting on behalf of Andre Cooley, a corrections officer for juvenile detainees with an exemplary record, fired by his supervisors after they discovered he was gay. The ACLU argues Cooley’s equal protection and due process rights guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution were violated. According to reports, on June 14th, while at home and off-duty, Cooley called 911 after his boyfriend became physically violent, and among those officers attending the emergency call was Chief of Corrections, Charles Bolton, Cooley’s supervisor. Cooley’s boyfriend told Bolton that the two were in a relationship, and Bolton allegedly told Cooley not to return to work before speaking with his immediate supervisor, Donnell Brannon. The next day, Brannon told Cooley he was terminated, and when Cooley asked if he was being fired for being gay, Brannon replied “Yes.” To add insult to injury, the sheriff’s department tried to deny Cooley unemployment benefits because, they alleged, he was engaged in unspecified “inappropriate conduct and behaviour while off duty, unacceptable for an officer.” A later hearing determined that the sheriff’s department failed to demonstrate that Cooley, identified in the original police report as the victim of a domestic dispute, had committed misconduct of any kind. Cooley, who was raised in the state’s foster care system, and says he entered the field of corrections officer to act as mentor and positive role model for troubled teens, said “I loved my job, and I did it well. It shouldn’t matter whether I’m gay or straight. Because I grew up in the foster care system, I know the type of problems faced by the kids in the juvenile corrections. As a corrections officers I could give back by helping these kids turn their lives around and build a future for themselves.” Joshua Black, a staff attorney for the ACLU, said that Cooley’s sexual orientation had no direct bearing on his ability to perform the duties required of his job, and added that this termination serves as a “reminder that people in Mississippi who work for private companies are left almost entirely unprotected from anti-gay discrimination. There is currently no state or federal law protecting against employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.”