Employee's refusal to attend LGBTQ training leads to termination upheld by court

A federal appellate court has rejected the appeal of a former account clerk in upstate New York who was fired from his job for refusing to attend a mandatory LGBTQ training in 2018. The plaintiff had argued that the LGBTQ training and makeup session were "aimed at changing his religious beliefs about gender and sexuality," and that attending the training "would have caused him to violate the religious teachings to which he adheres," according to the lawsuit. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals backed the Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES), saying in its opinion that the plaintiff had failed to provide "sufficient evidence" for his claims.