In Swartz v. Sylvester, (D MA, June 28, 2021), a Massachusetts federal district court dismissed a damage action brought by a firefighter who was disciplined after he refused, based on his personal Christian religious beliefs, to sit for an in -uniform photograph because it might be used for promotional purposes, and not just for ID tags and cards. The court said in part:
[T]he order was both facially neutral (and neutral in light of the totality of the circumstances) and generally applicable. Therefore, Sylvester must show only a “rational basis” for the policy....
The court also found qualified immunity:
even assuming that Swartz’s rights under the Free Exercise Clause were in fact violated, the legal contours of those rights were not sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would have understood that what he was doing violated them.
