The judgment against Emporia State University marked one of the most significant religious discrimination verdicts in Kansas higher education in recent memory.
On January 21, jurors found that the university and two senior administrators unlawfully discriminated against Dr. Dusti Howell, a tenured professor of Instructional Design and Technology, after he took time off to observe religious holidays he had marked for decades. The award—$5,181,344.55 in compensatory and punitive damages—followed a trial that began January 12 and traced how routine accommodation gave way to discipline, isolation, and what Howell’s attorney described as a forced exit from academia.
“They just made his life miserable because of his religious practice.”
The verdict carries broader implications at a moment when religious accommodation standards have been recalibrated nationwide. Jurors concluded that Emporia State violated the Kansas Preservation of Religious Freedom Act, the Kansas Act Against Discrimination and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, underscoring that public employers face strict obligations to justify any denial of religious accommodation.
Howell had spent more than 20 years teaching at Emporia State and had held tenure for 12 of them by the time the conflict erupted in 2020. A member of a nondenominational church that observes holidays overlapping with the Jewish calendar, Howell had long taken brief, preplanned absences—an arrangement that had never drawn formal objection. That changed after he returned from observing the Feast of Tabernacles, a religious conference he said he had attended since childhood and throughout his career at the university.
“I came back from a one-week church conference, which I’ve gone to since I was 6 years old and for 23 years at Emporia State,” Howell said. “They said, ‘You can’t do that anymore, not without getting an eight-week, preapproved notice from HR, and the dean and your chair.’”
The contrast with secular travel was stark. When he asked whether attending a technology conference would require similar advance approval, he recalled being told, “Oh, yeah, you don’t even need to tell us. Just go. But if you’re gone for a church conference, gone for one day for church, yeah, you need eight weeks preapproval. We’ll let you know whether you can go or not.”
University officials justified the discipline by pointing to two missed class sessions during Howell’s absence—classes covering green screen technology. Howell said that he had arranged for his graduate teaching assistant to lead those sessions, a practice he described as commonplace in higher education.
“She was probably the best graduate teaching assistant I’ve had there in 23 years,” Howell said, adding that she was a former department head at a university in India. “She was fantastic as a graduate teaching assistant, but I was chastised for allowing a graduate teaching assistant to teach in my class.”
From that point forward, the lawsuit alleged, the university escalated its response. In a letter dated November 4, 2020, then-Dean Joan Brewer disciplined Howell based on claims the jury later heard were factually incorrect. According to the complaint, Brewer asserted Howell had been absent for “weeks,” failed to respond to emails for extended periods and improperly placed himself on leave—allegations Howell disputed point by point. The filing stated that the absences cited were shorter than claimed and that no written policy supported the procedural demands imposed on him.
The dispute widened beyond a single professor. Court filings introduced evidence that Emporia State lacked any formal policy for accommodating religious observances and had previously resisted such accommodations for students. In 2016, the university considered adopting a written policy on religious absences, according to the filings, but the faculty senate declined to enact it, leaving accommodation decisions to ad hoc administrative discretion.
As the case progressed, Howell said the consequences compounded. He was removed from graduate-level teaching, excluded from departmental email chains and later reprimanded for missing meetings he said he had never been informed about in the first place. His attorney, Linus Baker, argued these actions were designed to create a record of noncompliance that would justify his termination.
“It was a constructive discharge,” Baker said, describing a situation in which an employer makes conditions so intolerable that resignation becomes inevitable. “I mean, they just made his life miserable because of his religious practice.”
The verdict does not restore his position, but it does restore, in legal terms, what the jury determined was taken wrongfully.
The legal strategy intersected with a major shift in federal law. Baker asked the court to pause the litigation while the US Supreme Court considered Groff v. DeJoy, a case that re-examined how employers assess religious accommodation. In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that employers must show “substantial increased costs” to deny an accommodation, rejecting decades of precedent that had allowed denials based on minimal burdens.
Baker told reporters at the time that Emporia State’s own history undermined any claim of hardship. The university had accommodated Howell’s observances for years, he said, and only reversed course after a change in leadership. “That’s something he has practiced habitually since he was there,” Baker said. “When he hired on, it was understood, right? So, I mean, it’s not like he had some epiphany during his employment where he changed the rules of the game.”
Jurors ultimately agreed, awarding roughly $2.1 million in compensatory damages, including for lost pay and benefits Howell would have earned had he not been forced out, along with $3 million in punitive damages intended to sanction the conduct. Additional attorney’s fees are expected, and the university has indicated it plans to appeal.
For higher education administrators, the verdict lands as a cautionary signal. Public universities, often balancing scheduling demands against faculty autonomy, operate squarely within constitutional and statutory civil rights frameworks. The jury’s finding suggests that informal practices and unwritten expectations cannot substitute for lawful accommodation processes—especially when religious exercise is involved.
He resigned after being reassigned to teach only freshman courses, believing termination was imminent. The verdict does not restore his position, but it does restore, in legal terms, what the jury determined was taken wrongfully.
As the case moves toward appeal, its legacy may extend beyond Kansas. In an era of renewed scrutiny on religious liberty in the workplace, the Howell verdict reinforces that accommodation is not discretionary goodwill but a legal obligation.
For institutions navigating cultural and administrative change, the message from Lyon County is clear: Longstanding practice and basic accuracy matter. So does religious freedom—and when it is treated as optional, the cost can be measured not only in reputational damage but in millions of dollars.
