A Tulsa police captain who refused to require that some of his subordinates attend a Law Enforcement Appreciation Day at a mosque added the city of Tulsa and Police Chief Chuck Jordan as defendants in his federal lawsuit Wednesday.
Capt. Paul Fields filed the complaint Feb. 23 against Deputy Chief Daryl Webster, claiming that Webster retaliated against him for the “exercise of his First Amendment Rights” and singled out Fields for disparate treatment.
The lawsuit was filed two days after Fields was “temporarily transferred” from the Police Department’s Riverside Division to another patrol shift at the Mingo Valley Division.
The Law Enforcement Appreciation Day was held at an Islamic Society of Tulsa mosque March 4 to give the group a chance to show its appreciation for police officers’ response to a recent threat against it.
Fields stated in correspondence with a superior that he considered the order to be “an unlawful order, as it is in direct conflict with (his) personal religious convictions, as well as to be conscience shocking.”
He also told his superiors that he would not require any of his subordinates to follow the order “if they share similar religious convictions.”
Besides the addition of the city and Jordan as defendants and the amplification of legal claims, Wednesday’s version of the lawsuit also featured the Thomas More Law Center entering the case on Fields’ behalf along with Tulsa attorney Scott Wood.
The Thomas More Law Center is a national,
public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Mich., that is “heavily involved in litigation defending the religious freedom of Christians as well as countering the infiltration of radical Muslims in America,” said Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel for the center, in a statement Wednesday.
“This case is an astonishing example of a double standard,” he stated. “If this were a Catholic or Protestant prayer event, no one would have been ordered to attend, and no one would have been punished for refusing to attend. It is a prime example of government officials over-stepping their authority when it comes to government intrusion on an employee’s constitutionally protected freedoms.”
A settlement conference is scheduled for Tuesday, but Wood said he expects it to be delayed now that the lawsuit has been updated.