Judge rejects lawsuit over California loyalty oath requirement for state workers
A federal judge has thrown out a challenge to California’s loyalty oath for state employees, siding with the State Controller’s Office over a Jehovah’s Witness who said she lost a job offer from the agency because of her religious beliefs.
Brianna Bolden-Hardge, a 31-year-old mother of two, sued Controller Betty Yee in Sacramento federal court in October after Yee’s office rescinded a job offer to work in the payroll department in the summer of 2017.
The lawsuit contended the job disappeared after Bolden-Hardge balked at signing the a loyalty oath to the state and U.S. Constitutions — one that is required under California’s Constitution for state workers — because she believed it conflicted with her religious beliefs.
Instead, she offered to sign the oath but wanted to add an “indication that her allegiance was first and foremost to God and that she would not take up arms,” the suit says.
Days later the job offer was rescinded and Bolden-Hardge filed suit using whistleblower attorney Wendy Musell and religious liberty clinics from Stanford and Harvard law schools.
Yee’s office and lawyers for the state pushed back, arguing in court filings that taking the oath does not conflict with an employee’s religious beliefs and that the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol shows how vital it is for government employees to support the Constitution.
“By committing to follow the highest laws of California and the United States, public employees are not required to forsake their God or their religion,” Deputy Attorney General Kelsey Linnett argued in court papers. “Indeed, the federal and state constitutions guarantee the very free exercise of religion that (Bolden-Hardge) seeks to protect in this lawsuit.
“It is undisputed that (she) sought a job as a public employee, and, in that role, she was required by the California Constitution to take an oath to discharge her duties lawfully in the face of threats to democracy and the proper functioning of government. Indeed, recent events at the U.S. Capitol demonstrate that these threats to the federal constitution are very real.”
Following an hour of arguments Monday afternoon before U.S. District Judge John A. Mendez, the judge sided with the state, dismissing the lawsuit with prejudice.
“The oath in no way affects your client’s ability to exercise her religious beliefs,” the judge said. “It just doesn’t.”
Mendez added that Bolden-Hardge was, in essence, asking Yee’s office “to break the law, to violate the constitution” by changing or ignoring the oath requirement.
Bolden-Hardge’s lawsuit says she is one of 1.3 million American members of the religion who believe her “allegiance is first and foremost to the kingdom of God.”
“Consistent with the religious beliefs of other Jehovah’s Witnesses, Bolden-Hardge has come to sincerely believe that her faith forbids her from (1) swearing primary allegiance to any human government and, correspondingly, (2) swearing to engage in political or military activity — including taking up of arms,” her suit says.
The case is the latest in a series of challenges dating back decades to the loyalty oath, and it highlights the varying degrees to which it is applied by various state entities.
At the time Bolden-Hardge applied to work at Yee’s office, she already had been an employee of the state Franchise Tax Board for roughly 18 months, but had never been asked to sign an oath, court papers say.
Only after she returned to the Franchise Tax Board job after the controller’s office position evaporated was she asked to sign an oath, and the board allowed her to include her addendum refusing to be required to bear arms or engage in violence or military affairs, court papers say.
She also was not asked to sign oaths in subsequent jobs with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation or the state Department of Housing and Community Development, court papers say.
Her lawyers also noted that the California State University system allows for “explanatory statements” to be tacked onto employees’ oaths.
And Bolden-Hardge attorney James Sonne, director of Stanford Law School’s Religious Liberty Clinic, noted that former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger once vetoed legislation to provide for loyalty oath accommodations by declaring that such protections already exist.
But Mendez was not persuaded.
“That doesn’t help you at all,” the judge said. “It’s not authority. I can’t as a judge base a decision on the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote something. That’s not 9th Circuit Court of Appeals or district court law that I can base a decision on.”
This story was originally published March 24, 2021 at 5:00 AM.