In Brown v. Alaska Airlines, Inc., No. 24-3789, 2026 WL 1813213 (9th Cir. June 24, 2026), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court’s summary judgment dismissal of plaintiffs’ religion-based discrimination claims asserted under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, finding that there existed a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether defendant terminated them because of their religious beliefs.
In sum, plaintiffs are Christian flight attendants who worked for defendant. This lawsuit arose from plaintiff’s post to an intranet communication network (called “Alaska’s World”) concerning the company’s support for the Equality Act, which is proposed federal legislation that would extend certain federal nondiscrimination requirements to cover discrimination involving sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity in various contexts.
From the decision:
We start with the observation that Brown’s post on Alaska’s World on its face reflected the expression of religious belief. In the post, Brown contended that the Equality Act would “endanger[ ] the Church,” “encourag[e] suppression of religious freedom,” and “eliminat[e] conscience protections.” During Alaska’s investigation, and even though she claims AFA counseled her not to, Brown defended herself by maintaining that her post was grounded in her religious beliefs, specifically requesting a religious accommodation. Alaska’s internal “Fact Finding Report” confirms that Alaska understood Brown to be offering, at least in part, a religious perspective on the Equality Act. As Alaska’s Carmen Williams similarly testified, “if you read her comment … you can tell that she’s talking about religious concerns that she may have.” This same understanding was confirmed by Peterson’s text to Alaska management, in which he specifically connected Brown’s post to religion when saying: “I wish fewer people would struggle so much with unifying their faith with inclusivity.” As Peterson later testified, it was “self-evident” that Brown’s post was based on her religious convictions.
The fact that Brown was terminated after posting a facially religious statement, by a company (and cooperating union) that understood the religious basis for the post, provides the initial grounding for a genuine dispute of material fact regarding whether Alaska terminated Brown because of her religious beliefs. See Hittle, 101 F.4th at 1012 (“Under Title VII, the plaintiff need only demonstrate[ ] that race, color, religion, sex, or national origin was a motivating factor for any employment practice, even though other factors also motivated the [unlawful employment] practice.” (quotations omitted)). The district court concluded that “the only reasonable inference that one can draw is that Alaska did not terminate Plaintiffs because of their religion, but because of the comments they posted.” But because Brown’s post was at least partially religious in nature and was understood that way by Alaska and AFA, the district court’s conclusion does not resolve the issue. See, e.g., A.G. v. Paradise Valley Unified Sch. Dist. No. 69, 815 F.3d 1195, 1202 (9th Cir. 2016) (“We draw all justifiable factual inferences in favor of the nonmoving party, and we reverse an order granting summary judgment if any rational trier of fact could resolve a material factual issue in favor of the nonmoving party.”).
The district court additionally determined that Brown’s post was not “grounded in religious belief at all” because “Brown testified that her Christian faith taught her to speak up for the vulnerable,” which the court described as not “anything other than a universal human precept.” The court further discounted that Alaska discriminated on the basis of religion because Brown “was unable to point to any specific passage in the Bible, teaching of her religious leaders, or other religion-specific source,” and because any view concerning the binary nature of human sexuality was “neither unique to, nor a particular tenet of, Christianity specifically or religion more broadly.”
This reasoning was mistaken. The role of the courts in assessing a plaintiff’s religious beliefs is limited to determining “whether the beliefs professed by the [plaintiff] are sincerely held and whether they are, in [her] own scheme of things, religious.” United States v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163, 185, 85 S.Ct. 850, 13 L.Ed.2d 733 (1965); see also Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colo. C. R. Comm’n, 584 U.S. 617, 639, 138 S.Ct. 1719, 201 L.Ed.2d 35 (2018) (“It hardly requires restating that government has no role in deciding or even suggesting whether the religious ground for Phillips’ conscience-based objection is legitimate or illegitimate.”); Heller v. EBB Auto Co., 8 F.3d 1433, 1438 (9th Cir. 1993) (“Title VII protects more than … practices specifically mandated by an employee’s religion.”). It did not matter whether Brown could support her Alaska’s World post with chapter and verse from an authoritative religious text. See Damiano, 140 F.4th at 1155 (“[I]t is well-established that an individual may sincerely hold a religious belief that is not reflected in a biblical passage or scripture.”). Nor is the religious nature of Brown’s post undermined by the fact that more than one religion may share in the same underlying views, or that the beliefs expressed could be regarded as non-religious human values. See id. (“Nor can the courts easily distinguish between beliefs springing from religious and secular origin.” (quoting Callahan v. Woods, 658 F.2d 679, 687 (9th Cir. 1981))).
In this case, moreover, other circumstantial evidence beyond the evident religious grounding of Brown’s post supports the inference that Alaska may have terminated Brown based on her religious beliefs. Internal Alaska emails showed the company discussing how “[e]mployees actually do not have the right to believe that LGBTQ rights are ‘immoral.’ ” And the change in company policy that Brown’s post engendered came only after the CEO expressed concern about “[c]ensor[ing] people for having conservative Christian views.”
The communications involving AFA Master Executive Council President Jeffrey Peterson also support Brown’s assertions of possible anti-religious bias. Despite AFA’s role as Brown’s union representative, it is apparent that AFA and Peterson in particular were heavily involved in Alaska’s investigation of Brown, perhaps to an unprecedented degree. Soon after Brown posted on Alaska’s World, Peterson reported the matter to Alaska management and, critically, wrote to various Alaska executives by text: “I wish fewer people would struggle so much with unifying their faith with inclusivity.” A reasonable jury could conclude that Peterson’s comment specifically connected Brown’s post to her religious faith, and that it did so in a disparaging way by suggesting an infirmity in Brown’s religious beliefs. The same is true of Peterson calling Smith a “bigot” and “bigoted,” terms that in the context of this case could be understood as pejorative references to religious beliefs.
The district court considered the comments of Peterson and others at AFA “coarse and unprofessional” but determined that none “raise[d] an inference of discrimination on the basis of religion.” (Emphasis omitted). Construing the facts in the light most favorable to Brown, we conclude differently. Although some of the inappropriate statements from AFA personnel lacked a religious connotation, a reasonable jury could conclude that others did. In view of AFA’s involvement in the investigatory and disciplinary process, the arguably disparaging statements that allude to a protected ground support an inference of discrimination. See, e.g., Dominguez-Curry v. Nevada Transp. Dep’t, 424 F.3d 1027, 1038 (9th Cir. 2005) (“Where a decisionmaker makes a discriminatory remark against a member of the plaintiff’s class, a reasonable factfinder may conclude that discriminatory animus played a role in the challenged decision.”); Sheehan v. Donlen Corp., 173 F.3d 1039, 1044 (7th Cir. 1999) (observing that “isolated comments may constitute direct evidence of discrimination” if “causally related to the discharge decision making process”).
In addition, the fact that Brown was terminated outright, rather than given any lesser punishment under Alaska’s progressive discipline policy, contributes to the inference that she was terminated because of her religious beliefs. See Earl v. Nielsen Media Rsch., Inc., 658 F.3d 1108, 1117 (9th Cir. 2011) (explaining that a “triable issue of pretext” may be raised through evidence of an “employer’s deviation from established policy or practice” (citing Diaz v. Eagle Produce Ltd. P’ship, 521 F.3d 1201, 1214 (9th Cir. 2008))). That conclusion is made more plausible in this case by the fact that Brown was an employee with an otherwise unblemished disciplinary record who got along well with her LGBTQ coworkers, received positive customer feedback, and showed contrition at her internal investigatory meeting.
The additionally rejected defendant’s contention that it did not fire Brown for her religious beliefs, but rather because it regarded her as having violated the company’s anti-discrimination and harassment policies. Defendant’s argument, held the court, “captures the genuine dispute in this case; it does not settle it,” since “a reasonable jury could find Alaska’s position pretextual.”