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Former security guard sues, says firing was discrimination
Saturday, August 11, 2001 By Dennis B. Roddy, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
A lifelong resident of Westmoreland County has filed suit with the federal Equal Opportunity Employment Commission saying he lost his job as a security guard as a result of national origin: Confederate Southern American.
The unusual filing is being handled by a North Carolina-based legal center that specializes in representing pro-Confederate and Southern-rights cases.
Curt Storey, 62, of Hunker, Westmoreland County, lost his job earlier this year with Burns International after he refused to remove Confederate flag stickers from his lunchbox and pickup truck while he worked as a contract security guard at the Sony television tube plant in South Huntingdon.
He is seeking reinstatement to his $8-an-hour job, back pay and damages.
"We'll also be asking for sensitivity training on Confederate American issues, so that people in the workplace know these people are out there and they should not be dealt with in a cavalier fashion," said Lyons of the Southern Legal Resources Center, after filing the complaint.
The complaint came on the same day Storey and his supporters rallied outside the Sony plant. He has kept a daily protest vigil at the site since losing his job, with two large Confederate flags propped on the back of his pickup truck and a sticker reading "The South Was Right."
A spokesman for Burns International could not be reached yesterday for comment.
While Storey's is one of about 10 complaints claiming Confederate Southern American as a national origin, it marks the first time Lyons has asserted it on behalf of someone born and raised north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Lyons said he believes the EEOC standard for national origin should be interpreted broadly enough to cover anyone who feels an affinity for the South or the Confederacy, although Storey has also contended that he has ancestors from the South.
"In this case, Mr. Storey ... can legitimately claim that he is being discriminated against because of the place where his ancestors came from," Lyons said.
The complaint also asserts that Storey was discriminated against because of his color and religion.
In his four-page complaint, Storey said he was discharged "because I would not remove venerated Confederate symbols" from his lunchbox and truck bumper, and said he considered it discrimination "because Burns Security specifically targeted Confederate symbols only ... Burns assumes, prejudicially, that the Confederate flag is a racist symbol and that therefore I am intentionally trying to offend other workers."
Burns has contended that Storey voluntarily resigned his position, something Storey strongly disputes.
The status of Confederate Southern American as a national origin is currently the subject of an appeal before the Fourth U.S. District Court of Appeals.
Lyons, Storey's lawyer, has been a controversial figure in both the legal and political communities because of his past representation of various white separatists and far-right political figures.
In the 1980s, he represented James Wickstrom, a leader of the racist Christian Identity sect and a national figure in the Posse-Comitatus, in a counterfeiting case in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh.
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