Austin Fire Chaplain Wins Settlement After Being Fired for Defending Biological Reality
A former volunteer chaplain with the Austin Fire Department won a settlement after being fired for defending biological reality on his personal blog.
In a favorable settlement agreement, city officials paid him damages and wrote a letter thanking him for his eight years of service to the Austin Fire Department.
“Everyone should be able to speak freely without fear of punishment just for expressing a view with which the government disagrees,” said Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Hal Frampton, director of the ADF Center for Conscience Initiatives.
“Dr. Fox served Austin’s fire department – without pay – for eight years with excellence and integrity, serving everyone, including those in the LGBT community.”
Andrew Fox was born in the United Kingdom and felt called to Christian ministry as a young man. Ordained in the Assemblies of God church in Great Britain, he worked full-time in ministry before feeling called to minister in the United States.
Fox immigrated to the U.S. with his wife in 1999 and began pastoring a church in Washington state. As a pastor, Fox interacted with multiple law enforcement members and became involved with the Kennewick Police Department, serving as its official volunteer chaplain beginning in 2004.
While assisting the police department, Fox graduated from the Police and Fire Chaplain Training Academy and completed crisis intervention training.
Fox and his family moved to Austin, Texas in 2012. There he helped start the city’s fire chaplaincy program and served in a volunteer capacity as Austin’s lead chaplain for eight years.
Fox, who also runs a personal blog, posted about the biological differences between men and women and argued men should be barred from competing on women’s sports teams.
City officials took issue with his writings. After an employee complained to the fire department’s LGBT liaison office about his blog posts, Fox’s superiors demanded he apologize and then fired him.
Fox, represented by lawyers with ADF, filed a lawsuit in 2022 seeking to restore his First Amendment rights.
The complaint argued the “Fire Department … punish[ed] Dr. Fox for his own personal speech – unrelated to his job duties – on religious views held by tens of millions of orthodox Christians.”
You can learn more about Fox’s case below:
Following the settlement, Fox said in a statement,
No one should be reprimanded for exercising their First Amendment rights to religious freedom and free speech – much less a sincere Christian pastor who spends his free time helping others.
Frampton added,
The case is Fox v. City of Austin.
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Related articles and resources:
Understanding “Transgenderism”
Religious Freedom and Free Speech
Teacher Wins $650,000 After Being Fired for Refusing to Use ‘Trans’ Pronouns
Oregon School District Pays $650,000 for Firing Teachers Opposed to ‘Trans’ Policy
Photo from Alliance Defending Freedom.
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