By Mike O’Brien Religious discrimination An Asian-American engineer who worked for a municipal utility in Stockton, Calif., filed a lawsuit claiming that city officials belonging to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the “Church”) sought to recruit, hire, and promote members of their own faith and that he was denied a promotion because he was a member of the Laotian Folk Religion. The trial court dismissed the lawsuit before trial, but a California appellate court reversed, ruling there was sufficient evidence of discriminatory motive for the religious bias claim to proceed to trial. The appellate court came to this conclusion even though the municipal utility employs a number of high-level employees who are not members of the Church and the position was ultimately filled by a person of… . . . read more