Fire chief, department dropped from dreadlocks discrimination case

The Fire Department and Chief Mike Beyerstedt have been dismissed from an employment-discrimination lawsuit a Pascagoula man filed over the city’s anti-dreadlocks stance, but the city remains a defendant.

U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola denied the city’s motion to throw out the lawsuit filed by Larry D. Christmas Jr., who claims he lost out on a firefighter’s job because he refused to cut off dreadlocks that fall down his back. Christmas says he wears the dreadlocks for cultural and religious reasons.

Christmas has sued at least three previous employers for discrimination, court records show. Two of the cases have been dismissed. Christmas filed the third lawsuit against against D&G Foods LLC of Hazlehurst on December 23 — eight days after he sued the city of Gulfport.

In all four cases, Christmas has represented himself. In the most recent versions of his lawsuit against Gulfport, Christmas says he is a Nazarite, which in the Hebrew version of the Bible describes a person who abstains from wine, cutting off their hair or touching corpses. In the lawsuit, he accuses the city of discriminating against him because of his religion and race.

By all accounts, Christmas scored high as a firefighter candidate in Gulfport. He was offered a job in December 2014, but Beyerstedt said Christmas would need to cut off his dreadlocks for safety reasons, according to the lawsuit. Christmas told the Sun Herald in May that he was unwilling to cut his hair and did not believe it was necessary.

Guirola dismissed the Fire Department from the lawsuit because it is a department of the city, not a separate legal entity. He said he was dismissing Beyerstedt because the complaints against him are the same as those against the city.

The city is the only remaining defendant in the case. Christmas is seeking $2.5 million in damages.

This story was originally published June 28, 2016 at 6:13 PM with the headline "Fire chief, department dropped from dreadlocks discrimination case."