A Christian software engineer from Queen Creek, Arizona, claims that he was discriminated against by GoDaddy, an Internet domain registrar based in Scottsdale.
Keith Connolly applied for a job with GoDaddy in April 2014, after he was recruited by the talent acquisition team. Despite some reservations about working for the company because of its “risqué advertisements," Connolly went through the application process.
It was going well, according to Connolly. He completed two telephone interviews and two Skype interviews, and was even summoned to the headquarters in Scottsdale.
“I didn’t mention my faith at all while I was interviewing,” Connolly told Fox News. “I didn’t have a ‘Jesus Saves’ shirt or giant cross. It was just a standard interview.”
Later, Connolly received a generic rejection email which had apparently been sent by the company’s recruiting team. That was the original email, but it came with a forwarded email as well.
“About Keith he's great for the job in skills but he looks worse for wear do we really want an obeese (sic) Christian? Is that what our new image requires of us,” the message in the forwarded email reads.
Connolly was left embarrassed and depressed, he said, and didn’t mention it to anyone until recently. He told his attorney Casey Yontz, and the two sought legal action, but the case was barred under discrimination law because it had passed the statute of limitations, which forbids prosecutors from charging somebody with a crime that was committed a specific number of years ago.
Yontz said that he asked GoDaddy to issue an apology.
“They said they weren't going to apologize and that was the end of it,” Yontz said. According to Yontz, GoDaddy's legal team implied that the email may have been hacked into or manufactured.
GoDaddy also denied the allegations to KTAR, saying they're without merit.
“We believe the allegations are completely without merit and unequivocally deny them," GoDaddy spokesman Dan Race wrote in an email to Fox News.
“GoDaddy intends to vigorously defend itself against these false allegations, including pursuing legal action for fabricating this claim,” Race added.
In 2009, the U.S. Courts for the Ninth Circuit upheld a federal courts’ jury verdict that GoDaddy had retaliated unlawfully against an employee, who was fired for complaining about being discriminated against on the basis of his religion and national origin. They higher court also found GoDaddy violated federal record-keeping requirements after not saving employment applications that were relevant to the case.
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