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Demoted for views, NASA specialist going to court

Well, at least they’re not sending us to insane asylums… Yet…

http://www.wnd.com/2012/03/demoted-for-views-nasa-specialist-going-to-court/

A trial is starting in just days on a claim by a space scientist that he was demoted for expressing his views on intelligent design, the theory that the universe and life are too complex to have randomly erupted from a puddle of sludge on some prehistoric landscape.

The case is a response to a punishment handed down to David Coppedge, a worker at the NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, which sent the unmanned spacecraft Galileo to Jupiter and dispatched a ship named Dawn to orbit asteroids Vesta and Ceres.

Looks suspicious already, said the judge:

“A trier of fact would be entitled to disbelieve defendant’s stated reasons for the adverse employment actions,” the court opinion continued. “A trier could find it suspicious that defendant initially investigated plaintiff for workplace harassment, issued a written warning that was later rescinded, and demoted plaintiff for reasons separate from the alleged workplace harassment. The shifting nature of defendant’s response to the alleged workplace harassment could cause a trier of fact to question the legitimacy of the demotion and written warning.”

And it seems that the Jet Propulsion Laboratories, run by the California Institute of Technology, actually brought religion into the reason they were punishing him:

Coppedge was a high-level “team lead” technical specialist before his demotion and later removal. The California Institute of Technology runs JPL under a contract with NASA.

“Employees shouldn’t be threatened with termination and punished for sharing their opinion with willing co-workers just because the view being shared doesn’t fit the prevailing view in the workplace,” said Becker.

“Mr. Coppedge has always maintained that intelligent design is a scientific theory, but JPL has illegally discriminated against him on the basis of what they deem is ‘religion,’” Becker said.

 

 

 

 

A trial is starting in just days on a claim by a space scientist that he was demoted for expressing his views on intelligent design, the theory that the universe and life are too complex to have randomly erupted from a puddle of sludge on some prehistoric landscape.

The case is a response to a punishment handed down to David Coppedge, a worker at the NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, which sent the unmanned spacecraft Galileo to Jupiter and dispatched a ship named Dawn to orbit asteroids Vesta and Ceres.

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The case will be tried starting Wednesday in Los Angeles, where the Superior Court of California earlier refused to rule in favor of the lab without a trial. The court determined there is sufficient evidence for a jury to consider.

The court then found “there are triable issues of fact as to whether plaintiff’s demotion, written warning, negative performance evaluations, and ultimate termination were adverse employment actions. … While the written warning or negative performance evaluations may not be actionable in isolation, a trier of fact would be entitled to consider them as a part of a generalized discriminatory response to plaintiff’s religious views or protected activities.”

“A trier of fact would be entitled to disbelieve defendant’s stated reasons for the adverse employment actions,” the court opinion continued. “A trier could find it suspicious that defendant initially investigated plaintiff for workplace harassment, issued a written warning that was later rescinded, and demoted plaintiff for reasons separate from the alleged workplace harassment. The shifting nature of defendant’s response to the alleged workplace harassment could cause a trier of fact to question the legitimacy of the demotion and written warning.”

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This entry was posted on March 5, 2012 at 1:46 pm and is filed under Bible, Big Brother, Censorship, Christianity, Freedom, Government, Intelligent Design, Media, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Demoted for views, NASA specialist going to court”

  1. trutherator Says:
    March 6, 2012 at 12:26 pm

    But then Breitbart is dead, isn’t he? And Vince Foster, Ron Brown, Eugene Mallove, Michael Crichton (who was already moving into exposing politicized pseudo-science, and endangering the billions-big government- money teat)…

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