OKEECHOBEE, FL -- An Okeechobee man who was fired from his job at the Home Depot for wearing a button that reads "One Nation under God, indivisible," has hired an attorney to sue the company.
"I believe it is a religious discrimination case which is against federal law and state law here in Florida," said North Palm Beach attorney Kara Skorupa.
Last week, 20-year old Trevor Keezer said he was fired from his job at the Home Depot in Okeechobee after he refused to remove the button. It depicts an American flag with the phrase, "One Nation under God, indivisible."
Keezer said he wore the button on his Home Depot apron to show support for his brother, a serviceman headed to Iraq, and to express his Christian faith.
He worked at the Home Depot for 19 months and said his managers never told him there was a problem with the button until last month. That was about the time he started bringing a Bible to work to read during his lunch breaks.
"There’s nothing wrong with having a Bible at work to take wherever you want to read and I think it just kind of hit them the wrong way and I think that was the pretense they used to fire him was ,'Oh, by the way, your button is not Home Depot issued,'" said Skorupa, whom Keezer hired to represent him.
Home Depot spokesperson Craig Fishel said he could not comment on specific personnel issues but that, in general, the company's dress code does not allow employees to wear "non-company buttons regardless of their message or content to be worn on aprons or other clothing."
Fishel added, "As you can imagine with 300,000 associates across the country it is important to have a consistent policy to make sure we are respecting everybody’s views and beliefs."
Skorupa said Home Depot is not enforcing its dress code uniformly. She points out other employees have worn non-company buttons and not faced disciplinary action. And she adds Keezer wore his button for over a year before he was told to remove it.
"There’s nothing wrong with having a policy with a dress code. Obviously there are companies that have that and they should have that, but when you use that to punish someone because of their belief system then it becomes something else," said Skorupa.
She says she plans to file paperwork with the Florida Commission on Human Relations next week, which is a necessary first step to launching a discrimination lawsuit.
