(RNS) — Paul Ostapa had a problem.
In the summer of 2022, he was on the job as a heating and air conditioning technician in upstate New York with a couple of colleagues when one of them left, leaving him alone with a female co-worker. For years, he’d abided by the so-called Billy Graham Rule — vowing never to be alone with a woman who was not his wife.
(Photo on Unsplash/Creative Commons)
Not wanting to make a fuss, Ostapa finished his work and left as soon as he could. When it happened again, Ostapa complained to a dispatcher, saying his bosses had previously agreed to accommodate his beliefs after hiring a female technician.
That led to a report being filed with human resources by the dispatcher — and eventually to Ostapa being fired.
Now he’s suing, alleging his employer, the air-conditioning giant Trane U.S. Inc., violated his civil rights by failing to accommodate his religious beliefs and then fired him because of those beliefs.
Both the failure to accommodate and his firing, which Ostapa’s attorney described as retaliation, were violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the complaint alleges.
“There is a direct and causal connection between Paul’s sincerely held religious beliefs, his request for those religious beliefs to be accommodated, and Defendant’s adverse employment actions against Paul,” Ostapa’s lawyer wrote in a mid-October complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.
In an email, a spokesperson for Trane said the company was aware of the lawsuit but could not comment about ongoing litigation. According to the complaint, the company has claimed that Ostapa was fired for insubordination, rather than religion.
The complaint alleges that for most of the 15 years he’d worked for Trane, he’d had mostly male colleagues as technicians. When he learned a female technician had been hired, he went to his boss, identified as a Mr. Audette in the complaint, and detailed his beliefs and asked for an accommodation.
At first, according to the complaint, Mr. Audette allegedly laughed off Ostapa’s concerns, saying the new staffer was a lesbian, and so there would be no worries.
“Paul quickly retorted that his sincerely held religious beliefs based on Scripture must be obeyed irrespective of the woman’s looks or sexual preferences and that they were not contingent on the potential for sinful conduct,” the complaint alleges. “As Scripture compels Paul to believe, his presence alone with a woman carries with it the appearance of evil from which he is to abstain.”
Kristina Heuser, an attorney for Liberty Counsel, a Christian legal group, said that Ostapa worked mainly on commercial projects, rather than residential ones, and that his beliefs had never caused a conflict with clients. Heuser said her client had made a verbal arrangement with his supervisor, but nothing had been put in writing.
She also alleged that the company jumped the gun in firing Ostapa and should have taken time to learn more about his accommodation request, a claim also made in the complaint.
“They didn’t even engage in the interactive process that they were required to,” Heuer said in a phone interview. “They just said: ‘We don’t want to hear it. We’re not discussing that. And you’re fired.’”
The Civil Rights Act requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations, but not if doing so creates an undue hardship. Most legal disputes over religious accommodations, such as the case of a postal worker who objected to working on Sundays for religious reasons, hinge on determining the line between a reasonable accommodation and a hardship. In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled in the postal worker’s favor.
According to the complaint, Ostapa, who is Southern Baptist, came to the United States from Ukraine in 2001, in part because of concerns about religious liberty. “His family were devout Christians and fled their home country in pursuit of religious freedom, which they thought they would find here in the United States,” according to the complaint.
The complaint alleges that when Ostapa first heard his company had hired a female technician, he went to his supervisor to ask for an accommodation, which was initially granted.
“Paul was one of sixteen technicians in his unit, and the location where he worked employed approximately 25-30 technicians, so assigning another technician to work with the new female technician in his place would not have caused Defendant undue hardship,” according to the complaint.
Named for the famed evangelist who died in 2018, the Billy Graham Rule was part of a code of ethics called the “Modesto Manifesto” designed to avoid scandal. Other rules included being transparent and meticulous when handling money, avoiding criticism of other pastors, and refusing to inflate crowd sizes or other details about his ministry.
Though common in evangelical circles and beyond— former Vice President Mike Pence is an adherent — the Billy Graham Rule has rarely been tested in the courts. In 2019, a sheriff’s deputy in North Carolina sued after being fired for refusing on religious grounds to ride alone with a female colleague, but that suit was eventually settled before going to trial.
In 2013, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that a male dentist had not violated discrimination laws when he fired a female assistant at the urging of his wife. The dentist and his assistant had been texting, which his wife saw as a threat to their marriage, according to the ruling.
As part of their ruling, the Iowa justices said the friendship between the two — and not the gender of the hygienist — was at issue. They also noted the dentist may have treated his assistant badly by firing her, but had not discriminated.
A 2017 poll, taken in the aftermath of a controversy over Pence’s adherence to the Billy Graham Rule, found that a quarter of Americans said it was inappropriate to have a work meeting alone with someone of the opposite sex, with more frowning on having meals or drinks together.
The complaint cites the example of Pence and the biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, as well as one of the letters of Paul, in detailing Ostapa’s religious belief. Before filing suit, Ostapa had filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which ended its investigation without ruling on the merits of Ostapa’s claim.
The EEOC did issue Ostapa a right-to-sue letter. Heuser said the delay between Ostapa’s firing and the lawsuit was due to delays in the EEOC process.
