Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—RELIGIOUS—8th Cir.: Jail administrator, fired over anti-Muslim online treatise, gets Title VII suit reinstated, (Aug 20, 2025)

By Marjorie Johnson, J.D.

While there was some evidence that his inflammatory comments “could lead to reputational harm to the jail, the record nonetheless lacks sufficient evidence of an actual negative impact on the jail’s public image.”

The Eighth Circuit reinstated a Title VII religious discrimination lawsuit brought by a county jail administrator who was fired after a reporter published an article exposing an inflammatory document he publicly posted online, titled “The Church and the End of Time,” in which he described Muslims as “pawns of the devil” and disparaged “the gay lifestyle.” Though the county presented some evidence that retaining the administrator would cause harm to its public image and cause two agencies to end their agreements to send their overflow detainees to the jail, the record was insufficient to warrant summary judgment under the more rigorous standard for showing undue hardship set forth by the Supreme Court in Grof v. DeJoy, the Eighth Circuit explained (Naylor v. County of Muscatine, No. 24-1098 (8th Cir. Aug. 19, 2025)).

Since 2010, the plaintiff worked as the jail administrator for the Sheriff’s Office in Muscatine County, Iowa. In that capacity, he monitored the safety of the people detained at the jail, supervised staff, and compiled the jail’s budget.

“The Church and the End of Time.” In early April 2020, a reporter emailed the sheriff to ask whether he was aware that the jail administrator had posted a “lengthy treatise” and several YouTube videos online. The “treatise” was a public Google document he posted in 2013 that he titled “The Church and the End of Time.” In the document, he discussed his post-tribulation Rapture beliefs, including his predictions for an impending world war that he asserted Muslim people would perpetrate against Christian and Jewish people.

Newspaper article. The reporter then published an article in an Iowa newspaper about the jail administrator’s online commentary, titled “Iowa jail official: Muslims are ‘pawns of the devil’ aiming to kill Christians,” which quoted his online commentary at length.

Officials express concerns. Afterwards, a community member, a mayor, and another county’s board of supervisors expressed concern about the civil liberties of the people detained in the jail the administrator oversaw. The other county’s sheriff and a representative of the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) also had phone calls with the Muscatine County sheriff about whether the two outside entities would continue to house overflow inmates with the jail.

Terminated. Muscatine County put the jail administrator on administrative leave and, on May 1, 2020, fired him. His termination letter stated that his continued employment was “contrary to good order and discipline at the jail,” and that he “lack[ed] credibility to function effectively in a management role.”

Lawsuit. He sued, alleging the county violated Title VII by firing him because of his religious postings on the internet. The district court granted summary judgment against him, concluding the county could not reasonably accommodate his online religious commentary absent undue hardship.

Undue hardship under Groff. Abrogating prior case law requiring only a showing of “more than a de minimis cost, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Groff v. DeJoy, 600 U.S. 447 (2023), that to establish undue hardship, “an employer must show that the burden of granting an accommodation would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business.” The Court further stated that the hardship must typically impose a greater burden than that created “by temporary costs, voluntary shift swapping, occasional shift swapping, or administrative costs.” As such, the Eighth Circuit has held that any such hardship must be sufficiently “real rather than speculative, merely conceivable, or hypothetical.”

Harm to public image. The county argued that retaining the jail administrator would cause it to suffer undue hardship since the publicity surrounding his online commentary—which included disparaging views of Muslims and “the gay lifestyle”—had harmed its public image. In particular, the county claimed the commentary had spurred public concern that it was discriminating against members of these communities who were detained at or visiting the Jail. The district court agreed, explaining that “[j]ails, like police departments, have an interest ‘in maintaining the appearance of neutrality.’”

Actual negative impact not shown. Assuming without deciding that public image effects can present issues for an organization sufficient to rise to the level of an undue hardship under Title VII, the Eighth Circuit found that in this instance, the county failed to provide sufficient evidence to warrant summary judgment on this ground. “While there is some evidence of public concern about [the jail administrator’s] inflammatory comments about Muslims and the gay community, and some evidence that [his] behavior was publicized in a way that could lead to reputational harm to the jail, the record nonetheless lacks sufficient evidence of an actual negative impact on the jail’s public image,” stated the court.

Rather, the only concern voiced by the public came from a single community member’s email. Other disapproval came from public officials or in news articles, whose reach or impact was unknown. While a jury might conclude that the jail faced an undue hardship under these circumstances, summary judgment was not warranted “[a]bsent more definitive evidence of reputational harm, and with an unclearly articulated theory of how such harm would constitute a hardship.”

Harm to business relationships. The district court also erred in finding that retaining the jail administrator would impose an undue hardship since it would imperil the county’s business relationships. The court relied on evidence that two outside entities—USMS and a sister county—considered ending their agreements to send their overflow detainees to the jail as a result of his online commentary, and that the loss of these relationships would cause a significant financial burden to the county. While a reasonable jury might agree, the Eighth Circuit found that the evidence was insufficient to support the grant of summary judgment.

The record contained some evidence that the county’s contracts were threatened, as officials from both USMS and the sister county—the jail’s biggest client’s—suggested they might cancel their overflow contracts with the jail due to the administrator’s inflammatory comments. However, this was not enough at the summary judgment stage since “any loss of contractual relationships appears speculative,” explained the court. While the entities indicated they might terminate their respective contracts, the record “does not betray a sufficiently ‘real’ chance that either entity would have canceled its contract with the jail to find an undue hardship at summary judgment.”

The record also did not show that the loss of either or both of these contracts would pose a hardship “substantial... in relation to the conduct of [the jail’s] particular business,” as required under the Groff standard. For example, the record suggested that only four overflow detainees from the other county were housed among the jail’s 255-person capacity in April 2020.

The case is No. 24-1098.

Judge: Per curiam.

Attorneys: Robert Richard Anderson (Law Office of Robert R. Anderson) for Dean Naylor. Katelynn Turner McCollough (Dentons & Davis) for County of Muscatine, Iowa.

Companies: County of Muscatine, Iowa

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