Judges have reopened a religious discrimination lawsuit accusing a well-known Tennessee company of firing an employee at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic because he tried to avoid contracting the virus.
According to the lawsuit, the employee’s actions – such as social distancing and asking to work from home – contradicted the belief of his top boss, Dave Ramsey, that such preventive measures were contrary to God’s will and demonstrated spiritual weakness.
The work culture at Ramsey Solutions has been under scrutiny in the media and in lawsuits in recent years. This particular lawsuit, filed in 2021, centered on video editor Brad Amos’ brief employment with the company that ended with his termination. The company, it was argued, fired or demoted those who disagreed with Ramsey’s spiritual beliefs.
Ramsey is a well-known conservative media personality and financial adviser who runs Franklin, Tennessee-based Ramsey Solutions (known in the lawsuit by its registered name, The Lampo Group). Neither the company nor its lawyers responded to emails and messages seeking comment Monday. The company had previously said Amos was not fired because of his religious beliefs or COVID-19 precautions, but because of his poor job performance.
Ramsey’s law firm argued in court that Amos’ allegations of religious discrimination were absurd on their face and the lawsuit should be dismissed.
In late 2023, a U.S. district court in Nashville did just that. But Amos appealed the decision, resulting in the Cincinnati appeals court’s ruling last week, meaning some aspects of the case can now go to trial.
“Amos pleads that his deeply held religious beliefs required him to take COVID precautions to avoid harming others and to protect his family — and that Lampo did not allow him to do so and ultimately fired him,” Circuit Court Judge Clay Boggs wrote in the opinion. “This is a plausible claim, supported by concrete factual allegations, that Amos was discriminated against because of his religion — which is sufficient to withstand a motion to dismiss.”
Amos’s lawyers did not respond to a message left at their office Monday.
According to the lawsuit, in mid-2019, while living in California, Amos spoke with recruiters at Ramsey Solutions who dispelled rumors that the company was similar to a cult and told him that as a Christian, he would be a good fit for the company.
In August of that year, Amos moved to Tennessee to begin his work as an editor. Everything was going well until early 2020, when COVID lockdowns were imposed across much of the world, the lawsuit says.
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On March 15, 2020, two days after Tennessee Governor Bill Lee ordered many state employees to work from home and discouraged in-person events with 250 or more people, Ramsey notified employees that a worker had contracted the virus, the lawsuit says.
But the next day, according to the lawsuit, Ramsey called a staff meeting of 900 people and announced that employees would not work from home under any circumstances.
The fear of working in the office because of COVID-19 shows “mental weakness,” Ramsey said, according to the lawsuit – a view the radio host also expressed on his show.
By mid-March 2020, the death toll from the virus was rising rapidly, and scientists were still struggling to get basic information about its spread. Meanwhile, the lawsuit says, Ramsey’s statements troubled Amos because they seemed to conflict with Amos’ belief that, as a Christian, he had an obligation to protect his family’s health and follow the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
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After the meeting, Amos confronted the company’s head of creative in front of the entire team to share his concerns and suggest precautions such as working from home, the lawsuit says.
The manager reportedly told Amos that the company’s response was sufficient and that Amos needed to “pray and move on.”
The lawsuit says his supervisors had previously praised Amos’ work. But in the weeks that followed, it says, his bosses pulled him off projects, failed to respond to messages, assigned him demeaning tasks, raised new and sudden concerns about his work and told him to “check his modesty” — which Amos said he understood to mean he should abandon his personal beliefs in favor of Ramsey’s beliefs.
In a social media post, Amos’ wife criticized what she saw as Tennessee’s weak response to the health crisis. The lawsuit says Amos’ superiors later brought up the post and encouraged him to talk to his wife to “bring them up to speed.”
Soon after, the lawsuit alleges, Amos was forced to attend one-on-one sessions with the head of the video department so he could be “retrained in the ‘Ramsey Method.'”
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The lawsuit says that during these meetings, Amos tried to steer the discussion toward business matters, but his supervisor insisted that his work was of superior quality. Instead, according to the lawsuit, she persistently inquired about his family and spiritual life and told Amos that he was unhappy in his marriage, despite claims to the contrary.
He was eventually fired on July 31, 2020, because his boss accused him of “lacking humility” and not being a good fit for the company. As evidence, one boss allegedly said Amos would “stand aside all the time” – a reference, the lawsuit says, to Amos’ efforts to avoid the virus in a workplace where masks and social distancing were aggressively discouraged.
Contact Andrew Schwartz at [email protected] or 423-757-6431.
A video of financial guru Dave Ramsey leading a seminar is shown in the lobby of Ramsey’s Lampo Group headquarters. (AP file photo/Josh Anderson)