Coppedge Loses Discrimination Suit

The judge has finally ruled in the David Coppedge wrongful termination suit and it did not go Coppedge's way.  Brian Charles of the Pasadena Star-News writes:

JPL officials applauded Hiroshige's decision.

"We are very pleased with the decision reached by the court," JPL officials said in a statement Thursday. "As we've stated from the beginning, the allegations raised by Mr. Coppedge were without merit. After weighing the evidence in this case, the court has agreed."

During the civil trial, attorneys for JPL painted Coppedge as a difficult employee who pushed his views upon his co- workers. JPL said Coppedge's layoff was in line with agency policy.

The court agreed.

"The evidence shows that Caltech has a detailed layoff policy, incorporating a layoff ranking process, which (Coppedge's supervisor) carried out. The evidence clearly shows that (Coppedge's co- workers) were more qualified than Coppedge regarding the skills needed on the project going forward, such as SCO/ ITL, web servers, and Linux, and that Coppedge had a history of poor customer relationships, particularly in comparison to the other System Administrators," the judgement said.

I expected this result and am sorry that he lost his job but it looks like, again, the Discovery Institute backed the wrong horse.

Judge Sides With NASA and JPL over Coppedge

Newsvine writes:

Superior Court Judge Ernest Hiroshige issued a tentative ruling Thursday saying he was leaning toward finding in favor of JPL, which had argued at trial that David Coppedge was let go because he was combative and did not keep his skills sharp, not because of his belief that life is too complex to have developed through evolution alone.

Concerning ID, and the fact that the prosecution made that the focal point of their case, the judge seems to have carefully worded his ruling:

"It does not specify the court's reasoning and it would be foolhardy to discern from its general language that the court had anything to say about the validity of intelligent design as a scientific theory or as a religious belief," Becker said. "We don't believe it was about religious belief, but David's co-workers perceived it as one and that's equally offensive under the law."

About Coppedge, they continue:

At trial, JPL attorney Cameron Fox contended Coppedge was a stubborn and disconnected employee who decided not to heed warnings to get additional training, even when it became clear the Cassini mission would be downsized and computer specialist positions eliminated.

Coppedge often was confrontational and insensitive to customers and colleagues, who had complained about his behavior and his advocacy of intelligent design, Fox said.

This tracks with testimony given about the tenure of Coppedge at JPL. People typically don't care what you believe if you are hard to get along with. They just want you gone. A very unfortunate situation. 

David Coppedge and David Klinghoffer

The Pasadena Star-News is reporting that the trial of the JPL employee that worked on the Cassini spacecraft and was accused of pushing intelligent design before he was sacked has begun. Brian Day writes:

David Coppedge, who was laid off from JPL in La Canada Flintridge last year, claims his termination was motivated largely by his belief in intelligent design, and his distribution of documentary DVDs on the subject in the workplace. The theory states that the complexity and order apparent in the universe points to the intervention of an intelligence, rather than the forces of nature and chance alone.

The aerospace company has denied wrongdoing. Coppedge's termination took place during a time when the Cassini program -- a spacecraft mission to Saturn which Coppedge worked to support -- saw about a third of it's employees laid off.

The NCSE has been following this case and has put up their own page of documentation here. Interestingly, the defense case seems to rest on two things: there was a 50% cut in funding in FY 2011 for the Cassini project so that layoffs were inevitable and that David Coppedge was very hard to get along with so that when the layoffs did occur, he was not exactly a moving target. The court recorder quotes Gregory Chin:

Chin received complaints from twenty five different managers about Coppedge's uncooperative attitude and poor interpersonal skills

...“Now you used the word “Personality issues”...what didn't they like about it?”

“His personality in terms of they did not like working with him. They felt he was insincere. They would talk to him. They would believe they would not listen to them and has already formed an opinion about what he is going to do and just ignore them. He was pleasant but they felt he was being insincere about it. And I guess that annoyed them.”

The complaint goes on to list a large number of people who either were frustrated with or chose not to work with Coppedge. As someone who has worked with a coworker who doesn't listen to what you say or to anyone else around them, I can tell you that this makes for an extremely tense and frustrating work environment. This is doubly so if this person is (as was in my case) someone that you have to interact with on a daily basis.

What further comes out in this transcript is that program management had come to Chin and asked that Coppedge be removed from the project:

Q: He said it would be best to get rid of David? A: I cannot be sure of those exact words, but I am paraphrasing. He said “What can we do to get David off Cassini?”

Critical to this testimony is that these conversations took place in the early 2000s and that one of his supervisors, Clark Burgess specifically protected him at the time. When the workforce downsized, and, as they put it, jobs became tight, there was talk of moving him on to other projects. The complaints about his intelligent design support did not appear until 2009. Whether or not he was obnoxious regarding those, if we are to believe the transcripts, there certainly was ample reason to let him go when the money got tight.

David Klinghoffer, of the Discovery Institute, has written on the subject here. Klinghoffer thinks that the case is about the wrong things. He writes:

The LA Times writer is referring to Judge Hiroshige's decision not to hear from a legal scholar (not a religion expert) on the larger context of anti-ID discrimination in academia. Crucially, no one but no one on either side is asking the judge to rule on the scientific status of intelligent design. JPL's legal team and Coppedge's lawyer William Becker have cast the trial very clearly as an employment discrimination case.

In the conclusion of his statement, Becker underlined that it's all about "an employee who was treated differently because of his interest in intelligent design; who acted in a manner he thought was appropriate to protect his rights and his job, and for just that reason his job was taken away from him." (You may wish to check the final transcript for the precise quote.)

Klinghoffer remarks that it is very peculiar that, in all of these criticisms about Coppedge’s conduct, no official records were kept. He writes:

Oddly, though, none of this appears ever to have been documented contemporaneously by any of these folks, in a workplace that was otherwise very good about putting such matters down in writing. Not in reports, emails, written complaints, nothing.

This is not odd, however, if you read the testimony, in which it is noted:

Burgess did not document many criticisms in Coppedge's annual performance to maximize Coppedge's chance to transfer to another project.

Burgess states:

“Part of the transfer scenario that I imagined would be—one thing that would be involved in that would be the review of the documents by his prospective new customer and I didn't want to put too much negativity into the ECAPS.”

The testimony then continues and it records that they were trying to protect Coppedge against further, documented complaints and had even bandied around the idea of terminating him long before the ID charge surfaced in 2009. Coppedge was even advised not to continue with this particular line of conversation with his fellow employees because, in concert with the preceding problems, he was told that it would not go well for him.

Damagingly, however, Chin admits he yelled at Coppedge and created a “hostile work environment” for him. He also called Intelligent Design religion and that he was not to promote his religion in the workplace. This gave Coppedge the ammunition that he needed for the lawsuit. That does not negate the problems that JPL had with Coppedge, however.

Klinghoffer ends his article by writing:

The real question before Judge Hiroshige comes down this: Who is David Coppedge? The Coppedge that JPL depicts seems completely at odds with the Coppedge that I've come to know slightly since coming down here to Southern California and that other people tell me about. The idea that this guy could "harass" anyone is just not credible to me at the moment.

Maybe, but even if the harassment charge doesn't hold water, it doesn't mean that he was a good employee or easy to work with. JPL's defense focused on the actual problem: that Coppedge was too hard to get along with, not the Intelligent Design ruse that the Discovery Institute and Coppedge are foisting in an effort to cry wrongful termination.

When the money got tight and layoffs had to happen, JPL did what any good business would: they let go of what they considered to be a problem.


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More on the JPL Dust-Up

The lawsuit filed by the JPL employee who claims discrimination based on his acceptance of Intelligent Design has made its way to the media. A story in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune has picked it up, as have a few other news outlets. At this point, details are still sketchy. The story, by Emma Gallagos, states:

David Coppedge is an IT employee who has worked on JPL's Cassini mission since 1997, but he is also a Christian who edits a blog titled "Creation-Evolution Headlines." The blog promotes the theory of intelligent design - the idea that an intelligent being - not evolution or random processes - is responsible for creating life and the universe.

"I think it's unfortunate that JPL, which is interested in exploring the origins of the universe would be hostile to the argument of intelligent design," said Coppedge's attorney William Becker, Jr.. "If anything, JPL is the premier space exploration resource in the world, it ought to have an openness to this theory."

On the other side of the fence, Dover looms large:

But a case like his probably won't have a shot in court, because courts have viewed intelligent design as a religious belief, rather than a scientific theory, according to Gary Williams, a professor at Loyola Law School.

Certain kinds of religious activity are protected if they are not intrusive - such as wearing certain religious garb - but speech during work hours is not included, he said.

So even if intelligent design is viewed as a religious belief, employers have the right to restrict what their employees discuss in a work context, Williams said.

Mr. Coppedge's attorney may argue that Intelligent Design is science and does not fall under the restrictions to which religious speech is subject. If he does, and if it is applicable, the defense will argue that the Jones ruling in Dover in 2005 established that ID is religious in nature and is, in fact, subject to those restrictions. It is a question of how narrowly ruled the Dover decision was. If it can be extended, then this could turn out very badly for ID.

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JPL Employee Alleges Demotion Because of Support for Intelligent Design

A NASA employee that works at the Jet Propulsion lab in Houston has filed suit, alleging that he was demoted because of his support for Intelligent Design. The PR Newswire, working off of a story from the Discovery Institute, has this to say:

The lawsuit (court number #BC435600) was filed by David Coppedge, an information technology specialist and system administrator on JPL's Cassini mission to Saturn, the most ambitious interplanetary exploration ever launched. A division of the California Institute of Technology, JPL operates under a contract with NASA. Coppedge was a "Team Lead" Systems Administrator on the Cassini mission until JPL demoted him for allegedly "pushing religion" by loaning interested co-workers DVDs supportive of intelligent design.

"For the offense of offering videos to colleagues, Coppedge faced harassment, an investigation cloaked in secrecy, and a virtual gag order on his discussion of intelligent design," said attorney Casey Luskin of Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. Luskin serves as a consultant to the Coppedge lawsuit. "Coppedge was punished even though supervisors admitted never receiving a single complaint regarding his conversations about intelligent design prior to their investigation, and even though other employees were allowed to express diverse ideological opinions, including attacking intelligent design."

Obviously, if this is true, there is no excuse for it. As long as he is performing his scientific tasks to the best of his abilities, what he thinks of ID should be irrelevant. We will have to see how this plays out. It would be nice to have a source other than the Discovery Institute, but at this point, all of the newswires are picking up their story. I think we will have to wait for more elsewhere.


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