Christian Fire Chief Denied 9th Cir. Rehearing Over Hard Dissent

Stockton, Calif., held on to its court victory over a Christian fire chief fired after attending a leadership summit sponsored by a church, with a divided Ninth Circuit declining to rehear the case.

The ruling Friday saw the three-judge panel that on Aug. 4 had rejected the worker’s claim that religious bias drove his termination revise its opinion, but drew a sharp dissent from one judge stating that the full court should have weighed the chief’s appeal and would have done so if the summit had been linked to LGBTQ leadership.

One judge joined most of that dissent and issued ...