City Rejects Firefighter for Being Homeschooled

The ACLJ is representing Andrew Coates, who was banned from becoming a firefighter because he was homeschooled. The city of Fremont, Nebraska, is discriminating against this brave hero because of his homeschool diploma.

As reported:

A volunteer firefighter for Cedar Bluffs Fire says he is hoping to make saving lives his full-time role.

“Making a career out of it would be the goal: to get paid to do what you love,” 22-year-old Andrew Coates said.

Coates applied to the Fremont Fire Department to further that goal, but the city rejected his application because his high school diploma indicated he was homeschooled, which is an unaccredited form of education in Nebraska.

We are taking direct legal action because a selfless American who wants to dedicate his career to saving lives should not be treated like a second-class citizen because his family exercised their right to homeschool.

It’s an unbelievable story. A young man who is just trying to get a job as a firefighter to protect their local community is rejected for a reason that likely several of our listeners’ kids or grandkids would be rejected for.

He has already worked for multiple years as a licensed EMT and has served as a volunteer firefighter. But for some reason, when he applied for a full-time position in the fire department, the city rejected his application. They essentially said his high school diploma was invalid because he was homeschooled.

As we stated on our website:

This is not a case about someone seeking special treatment. Andrew already serves as a volunteer firefighter with the Cedar Bluffs Fire Department. He holds a Nebraska EMT license. He has completed extensive firefighter training and dedicated himself to protecting the people around him.He was even recently awarded “Rookie Firefighter of the Year” by his volunteer department.

Summarily rejecting a qualified applicant because he has a homeschool diploma is completely unacceptable. The job requirements said nothing about prohibiting homeschoolers or that applicants had to be graduates of any specific state-accredited school. Only after our client’s application was rejected did the city go back and change the language.

We are not going to stand by and let them discriminate against this young man. The ACLJ is now fully engaged, as we have now signed Andrew as our client, and we will be representing him in court, not only standing up for him, but standing up for the rights of all homeschoolers across the country.

And it’s important for me to share how we found this client. He didn’t reach out to us. One of our followers tagged me on social media and suggested that the ACLJ needed to get involved in this situation. As soon as I read up on it, I agreed and sent it to our legal team, urging them to see what we can do.

Our legal team just sent a litigation hold letter to the city of Fremont, letting them know that a federal litigation can be reasonably anticipated from the ACLJ. They are now officially on notice.

Not only that, one of our attorneys got on a plane to Nebraska this morning to attend a city council meeting tonight where they’re trying to clean up the mess, so to speak, but it won’t be enough. His parents followed the law when it came to homeschooling their child, and the city decided that’s not good enough and chose to discriminate against him. Now they will have to contend with the full strength of the ACLJ and our supporters.

Today’s Sekulow broadcast included more discussion of our latest case, defending a client who only wanted to become a full-time fireman to serve and protect his community, only to be rejected because he was homeschooled. We even spoke with our client, Andrew Coates, on air to let him tell his side of the story.

Watch the full broadcast below: