In 2001, Cal StateDominguez Hills dismissed geography lecturer Alejandro Alonso after he refused to sign. He said at the time that he identified with the Jehovah's Witnesses and that swearing an oath to anyone but God violated his religious beliefs.
When his request for a religious exemption was denied, he proposed signing the oath and attaching a personal statement. That also was denied. Alonso, who went on to teach at USC, has become an expert on Los Angeles gangs and runs the website www.streetgangs.com.
In 1995, Methodist minister Bud Tillinghast was teaching a course on comparative religion at Humboldt State University, when he was pulled out of class by campus police and fired because he had not signed the oath.
Tillinghast said he believed that swearing an oath to the state helped establish the government as a religion.
"I was teaching world religions and I ran up against a state religion," the retired minister recalled. "My concern was that this was breaking down the separation of church and state and making the state a religion you swear allegiance to."
He filed suit against Cal State for reinstatement arguing that the oath violated the 1993 federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. But after a court found that law unconstitutional, his suit was thrown out.
In all, Tillinghast said, he went up against the loyalty oath three times. Before being fired by Humboldt, he taught a religion class at a community college for nearly a decade. For that job, the school allowed him to sign an alternate oath.
Last year, he was named to the Humbolt County Human Rights Commission. A potential problem was averted when officials decided he didn't need to sign the oath.
--
Efforts to remove the oath from the state Constitution have been unsuccessful, although the matter came under scrutiny in 1998 when a congressional subcommittee held a hearing on religious freedom.
Among those who testified was Zari Wigfall, a Jehovah's Witness who said she twice lost jobs at Sacramento City College in 1994 because of the oath, first as a student tour guide and later as a theater house manager for a children's play.
"Citizens are entitled to certain rights, and also minorities, including religious minorities, are given certain guarantees," she told the committee. "And I just didn't think that . . . because of my religious beliefs I would have two jobs taken away from me."
