A white Columbia Fire Department captain who was fired from his $53,722-a-year job for making threatening remarks on social media about a Black Lives Matter protest has filed a lawsuit against the city alleging racial discrimination.
The remarks by James “Jimmy” Morris were made in two posts on the veteran firefighter’s personal Facebook in 2016.
However, in his lawsuit, Morris says government cannot “restrict or otherwise chill individual civil rights.” In reaction to a white secessionist State House rally about the Confederate flag, the Black Lives Matter movement staged a counter protest on the night of July 16, 2016. That protest closed the major Interstate 126 corridor on the west side of the city.