Carriage of Justice: KKK Police Officer’s Firing Upheld

This entry was posted by owl and bear staff on Sunday, March 1st, 2009 at 8:52 pm.

The Nebraska Supreme Court upheld the firing of a State Patrol trooper for his ties to the Ku Klux Klan. Justice John Gerrard wrote that the former trooper, Robert Henderson, left, associated with an organization that uses violence and terror to oppose the state’s founding principles of equality and tolerance. Mr. Henderson, a trooper for 18 years, was dismissed in 2006 after the patrol discovered he had joined a racist group. He told an investigator he joined the Knights Party—which has described itself as the most active Klan organization in the United States—in June 2004.

An arbitrator said the firing violated Mr. Henderson’s First Amendment rights, among other things, but Judge Jeffre Cheuvront of Lancaster County District Court overturned that decision.

[NYT]