Fired because of cross necklace – woman claims
Ten Commandments, now dress code, in state’s religious liberty debate
From, The Kentucky Citizen Digest, March/April, 2002.

A cross necklace is at the center of a lawsuit filed by a Logan County woman.  Kimberly Draper claims her constitutional rights of free speech were violated when she was fired from her job at the Logan County Public Library because she refused to remove it.

Draper lost her job in April of last year and has filed suit in U.S. District Court.  The suit names the library, its director, Linda Kompanik, its assistant director, Sheryl Appling, and the library’s board of trustees as defendants.  Draper, who was hired by the library in 1998, said she was told on the day of her orientation that she was “free to wear religious jewelry,” according to the suit.  But 45 days later she was given a copy of the library dress code banning “religious, political, or potentially offensive decoration.”

According to the suit, in April 2001 Appling told Draper twice in one week to remove the necklace, but she refused.  Following her meeting with Appling, Draper met with Kompanik who told her she had to fire her, the suit says.

Kompanik denies that Draper was fired because of the necklace.  “It was something else,” she told an Associated Press reporter.  But Kompanik also said that out of consideration to the religious diversity of its patrons, the library prohibits workers from wearing religious symbols.  “If someone wants to check out a book, and one of us shows that we have a different religious point of view than them it could make [the patron] uncomfortable,” Kompanik said. 

Frank Manion, a Louisville-based attorney for the American Center for Law and Justice, the organization that is representing Draper in the suit, says the library’s policy is too broad and simply unconstitutional.  “Who’s to decide what’s potentially offensive?” he said.  

Key Family Foundation Contacts: Kent Ostrander , Executive Director Martin Cothran , Senior Associate Policy Analyst