Posted on 11/06/2010 10:01:01 AM PDT by IbJensen
Newark, N.J. (AP) - A former New Jersey train conductor fired after publicly burning pages from the Quran on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks filed a lawsuit Friday seeking reinstatement and monetary damages.
Derek Fenton's dismissal violated his constitutional right to free expression, the American Civil Liberties Union said in its lawsuit.
Fenton burned part of the Quran to protest plans to build an Islamic center several blocks from the World Trade Center site. Police ushered him from the scene, but he was not arrested. NJ Transit said it fired him two days later for violating its code of ethics.
Fenton "has the right to engage as a citizen in expressive activity about matters of public interest, including matters related to the proposed construction of an Islamic community center near Ground Zero," the lawsuit alleges. "When he burned pages of the Koran on September 11, 2010, as a protest against the center, Fenton was exercising that right."
NJ Transit's code of ethics requires employees to give notice to an ethics liaison officer before participating in political activities.
-snip-
The leader of a small Christian congregation in Gainesville, Fla., had planned to burn copies of the Islamic holy book to mark the Sept. 11 anniversary but called it off at the last minute.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
Good I hope he wins.
Everyone has the right to burn things, or nobody does.
If he burned any other book—Bible, the phone book, a copy of the Constitution—anyone who objected would be told “It’s just a book.”
So many in this society hold the Quaran as sacred—they’d never phrase it that way, but that’s how they treat it, with hushed awe, so powerful that burning it is recognized as provocation. Any other book, they’d shrug.
I hope he wins but I wish the outcome was that he gets his job back and one or more of his stupidvisors get fired... not that he gets a taxpayer funded “settlement”.
I’m somewhat surprised to see that the ACLU agreed to defend him. They have gone over to the side of darkness almost entirely.
Well, I guess they have to do an occasional good deed. And they’re saving money for one of the conservative outfits who usually have to step in and lawyer these cases.
I wish him much success.
Koran burning is wholesome entertainment, a symbolic gesture of resisting tyranny and pagan idiocy, something that should be encouraged by freedom loving people.
His case rests on the fact he works for the “government”. If he worked for anyone else, he wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.
Why? It's just the ramblings of a nut to develop a cult of hate and dominance.
Most are afraid of repercussions by the nut's followers so they pretend to "respect" it .
ACLU is like a broken clock, it’s right twice a day! Good for him.
If a flag or a bible can be burned, so can a koran.
As I recall, Gov. Christie came out in support of his firing.
Was it HIS Quran?.. Whats the problem?..
So he can't be a poll worker on his own time unless he asks?? Baloney!!
Many contracts have a phrase that says that if any part of this contract is illegal, that part is null and void.
They should gotten a gay bi racial single mother to burn a quran. Then it would have been bedlam for the left.
This guy should set up a public defense fund.
Actually, no.
There is an unspoken hierarchy of victimology. Female over male, latino over female, black over latino, gay over black, Muslim over gay. I think that’s the ranking at the moment, but not being a liberal, how can I know for sure?
Rankings change constantly, so nobody but liberals know what they are at a given moment, but they seem to have some sort of telepathy that keeps them up to date. It does appear that Muslims have zoomed up the ladder in recent years.
The one thing they never do is admit the possibility that a member of one Designated Victim Group oppressed a member of another such group. Instead, the DVG member is reslotted into the closest-fitting Designated Oppressor Group.
A gay in conflict with a Muslim therefore becomes a male for the duration of the conflict instead of a gay. A female in conflict with a black man becomes a white person, and so forth. If all else failes, the Oppressor becomes just an “American.”
The unspoken rationale behind this idiocy is that members of DVGs never do wrong. So if they do, they aren’t part of a DVG, they’re part of a DOG.
Exactly!
I think it's genuine respect--not the kind you have for a beloved uncle or grandmother, but for a weapon that could kill you. The problem is the dishonesty of those who don't admit the source of this respect, because it would lead to their having to side with the people they REALLY hate--conservatives.
That'd be almost as much fun as watching ecowhackos trying to decide what to do if they found an endangered animal eating an endangered plant...
If you are going to do somethinglike this, you need to do something that has ALREADY been done to a christian item, that the liberals applauded.
Like submerge it in a jar of Urine or decorate it with elephant dung.
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