Minister Loses Appeal in Religious Discrimination Suit

An Orange County minister who says that the Red Cross discriminated against him because he’s a Christian has lost a U.S. Supreme Court appeal.

Herbert Hall of Garden Grove, who has AIDS, filed the lawsuit in 1995 after attempting to become certified as an instructor for Red Cross classes on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome and HIV, the virus that causes it. After spending a year on a waiting list, he said, he finally went through the class only to be told that he would not be certified because Red Cross employees feared that his involvement in a Christian ministry would affect his teaching.

“We have to have a neutral presentation in the classroom,” Judy Iannaccone, a spokeswoman for the Orange County chapter of the American National Red Cross, said. “While he was in the training class, the finding was that he was using language that we did not consider neutral. He was advised that he could co-teach the class and, if he deleted that kind of language, we would reconsider.”

Hall rejected the offer to co-teach as discriminatory and filed the lawsuit in Santa Ana accusing the Red Cross of violating the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. A federal trial judge dismissed the case, however, after deciding that the religious-freedom law does not apply to the Red Cross. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals later agreed, ruling that the agency is not a “government actor” because the government doesn’t have permanent authority to appoint the majority of its governing board. After hearing Monday’s decision, Hall said, “My initial reaction was that I was shocked. . . . The effect is that the Red Cross can deny anybody they want to deny if they don’t like their looks, color or religion.”

Iannaccone said that the agency has never discriminated.

“The door is open to anyone,” she said.