Atheist says Denver officials fired him after a religious discussion at a holiday party
Austin Ray says in a federal lawsuit that he's a victim of religious discrimination
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Austin Ray began working for Denver, Colorado’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure in October of 2023 and everything was going fine, he thought, until the department held a holiday party that December.
While chatting with a group of employees that included his own boss, an assistant manager named Carmen kept badgering him about Christmas and how he celebrated it. Austin, an atheist, tried to change the subject, but the woman kept hounding him about it and asked him point blank, “Don’t you believe in God?”
It’s not clear if Austin answered that question, but he now says in a federal lawsuit that his direct manager, Michael Delgado, began retaliating against him in the months to follow. That happened shortly after he informed the HR department about what he experienced at the party.
Delgado didn’t intervene when the conversation was happening, Austin says, and things got worse after that:
After Mr. Ray engaged in his protected activity, his Manager, Mr. Delgato [sic], began retaliating against Mr. Ray by modifying Mr. Ray’s job duties, by forcing Mr. Ray to perform meaningless tasks, by isolating Mr. Ray, by alienating Mr. Ray within the Department, and by compromising Mr. Ray’s ability to perform his job.
Mr. Delgato [sic] thereafter went to great lengths to make it appear that Mr. Ray was incapable of performing his job.
The lawsuit says Austin was fired without warning in March. He had received no write-ups, no punishments, no “performance improvement plans,” etc. And while the HR department acknowledged receiving his complaints, they didn’t seem to do anything about them.
Austin says his firing was “both retaliatory and discriminatory in nature”—a response to him complaining about the party and being an atheist. The lawsuit says the government violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and that Austin has “suffered mental anguish and emotional distress” along with the loss of his job and the wages and benefits that come with it. That what he’s hoping to recover if the courts take his side.
In a formal response to the complaint, the city’s lawyers deny that Ray “successfully performed his job duties throughout his employment at the City” without further elaboration. They also deny that he was harassed at the holiday party, that he was asked about God, and that Delgado failed to intervene during that conversation. They also reject all of Austin’s claims about the retaliation he allegedly faced before getting fired.
They say the City acted within legal bounds during all of this:
At all times, the City’s actions were lawful, justified, and done in good faith.
Any and all actions the City took concerning Plaintiff were based on reasonable, legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons, and were consistent with business necessity.
They are asking the Court to dismiss this case or rule in their favor.
Without more details, it’s hard to know whether the firing was warranted or whether the conversation about religion actually instigated everything that followed. It’s entirely possible that the discussion at the party was completely innocuous and that the firing was based on his work performance, but we don’t have the information to confirm that. The City isn’t revealing those details in court—not yet, anyway.
According to Denverite, which first reported on this lawsuit, attorneys for the city and Austin Ray “declined to comment on the case.”
The incident, however, suggests that the best way to handle religion at work is not talking about it and never bringing it up. Even if that conversation was purely casual, the person with non-traditional beliefs firmly believes that he was subject to backlash because he didn’t subscribe to the majority’s faith. No one should be put in that position. Even if the firing was justified for other reasons, city officials should have taken more pro-active measures to avoid this predictable outcome.
Austin’s lawyer did not response to a request for comment.
I come from a family with lots of atheists. Would that my Mother had been one of them. But, i had lots of support from my Grandparents who were all non-believers. I learned early on not to talk about my religious views outside the family. When I announced when I was 10 that I was an atheist, my Mother a liberal Methodist, ran out and bought me a KJ Bible... I was a precocious 10 year old and dutifully read every word... As I like to quote 'Believing the Bible makes you a Christian. Understanding the Bible makes you an atheist.'
The christian co-workers will lie. The christian judge and christian jury members will believe them.