{"id":26630,"date":"2018-01-11T15:00:36","date_gmt":"2018-01-11T21:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mbcpathway.local\/?p=26630"},"modified":"2018-01-10T13:47:57","modified_gmt":"2018-01-10T19:47:57","slug":"court-rules-for-fire-chief-in-religious-liberty-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mbcpathway.com\/2018\/01\/11\/court-rules-for-fire-chief-in-religious-liberty-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Court rules for fire chief in religious liberty case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">ATLANTA (WNS) \u2013 A U.S. District Court judge ruled on Dec. 20 that city of Atlanta rules used to fire former Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran were unconstitutional.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">The ruling said policies restricting non-work speech allowed city officials to unconstitutionally discriminate against views with which they disagreed. Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed suspended Cochran without pay in 2014 because of a 162-page book Cochran wrote for men at his church, advocating for a historically Biblical view of marriage and sexuality. An investigation found no evidence Cochran ever discriminated against any member of the fire department on the basis of his religious beliefs. Despite that, in early 2015, the city fired Cochran.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A U.S. District Court judge ruled on Dec. 20 that city of Atlanta rules used to fire former Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran were unconstitutional<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26713,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_wpscp_schedule_draft_date":"","_wpscp_schedule_republish_date":"","_wpscppro_advance_schedule":false,"_wpscppro_advance_schedule_date":"","_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"","_twitter_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type":"","_pinterest_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_selected_social_profile":[]},"categories":[7,12,19,27],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Court rules for fire chief in religious liberty 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