Discrimination Claims of "Confederate Southern American" Fall

Last week it was the Church of Body Modification that the 1st Circuit faced, this week the 3rd Circuit gets the claim of a discharged security guard, who argues it was because of his national origin, "Confederate Southern American" and also his religion which arises from the same identity and the design of the Confederate flag. Storey v. Burns International Security Services (3rd Cir. 12/9/04) [pdf].



Once again, the all too obvious questions -- is this really a valid national origin, or is this really a religion -- get a pass:

For the sake of argument, we will assume that “Confederate Southern-American” is a valid national origin, and that the Confederate flag has some religious significance for members of this group.

Here, the Court found that Storey was really fired for refusing to remove Confederate flag stickers (4 to be precise) from his lunchbox. And since he did not make it clear that displaying the flags was significant to his religion, his case failed. Surely, there is a line somewhere that might raise the question of what is a valid religion, but if the Church of Body Modification or Confederate Southern-American, don't get us there, I can only wait with bated breath to see what does!