Appeals Court Rules Suit Against Dave Ramsey’s Company Can Continue (2024)

On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed a lower court decision to dismiss claims of religious discrimination at financial media personality Dave Ramsey’s company.

Former Ramsey Solutions employee Brad Amos sued the firm in December 2021, alleging religious discrimination and fraud. A few months after Amos moved to Tennessee from California to take a job at Ramsey Solutions, which was at the time called Lampo Group, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and Amos alleges that “from the outset, Ramsey and Lampo management were hostile to employees taking any sort of protective measures against the virus.” Those hostilities allegedly included management at the company criticizing Amos for social distancing and wearing a mask and ended with Amos getting fired.

“Defendants required complete and total submission to Mr. Ramsey and his views of the world in order to maintain employment,” reads the complaint, which alleges multiple other instances of employees getting fired over differing world views, including one woman being fired for getting pregnant without being married. “Even following laws and government mandates which are not in line with Defendants’ view of the world is reason for termination.”

Amos’ complaint says that his own religious views subscribe to the “golden rule” to do no harm to others, and that Ramsey, by forcing his conformity with a lack of COVID-19 protocol, was in direct opposition to that. Amos goes so far as to call the environment at Ramsey Solutions “cult-like,” with company leadership aggressively railing against any form of COVID-19 precaution.

After a long back-and-forth, including Amos allegedly having to go through meetings where company leadership tried to “indoctrinate plaintiff to the personal religious views of Dave Ramsey as a spiritual leader,” the company fired him. Amos alleges this was because he refused to accept Ramsey’s religious beliefs.

But Judge Eli Richardson was unconvinced and granted a motion to dismiss the case in December 2023, writing that Amos’ claims did not fall under religious discrimination because his failure to comply with Ramsey Solutions’ absence of COVID-19 protocols did not stem from his personal religious beliefs but rather a rejection of his employer’s religious beliefs stemming from “a disdain for the requirement itself.”

While the three-judge appellate panel upheld Richardson’s dismissal of Amos’ fraud claims, Judge Danny Boggs wrote in his opinion that Richardson made a mistake in dismissing the religious discrimination claim, arguing that Amos provided “sufficient facts” to support his claims of discrimination. The appeals court returned that claim to the district court for continued proceedings.

This is not the first time Dave Ramsey’s company has made headlines over an alleged toxic work environment. In articles dating back to 2014, Ramsey has been criticized for a host of alleged offenses, including pulling out a gun during a staff meeting, which was later confirmed in a deposition.

This is also not Ramsey’s first time in court over alleged unjust firings. One lawsuit, in which the plaintiff claimed they were fired for being gay, was settled in 2022. Another lawsuit was brought in 2020 by the woman who was fired for getting pregnant outside of marriage.

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