The Polish prosecutor’s office has confirmed its intention to appeal against a verdict earlier this year which acquitted the head of the human resources department of an IKEA store after firing an employee who had cited the Bible to criticize homosexuality on a staff internal forum.
The prosecutor’s office revealed it does not agree with the court’s findings that her dismissal of an IKEA employee was not motivated by his religious affiliation, and a spokeswoman for the Warsaw-Praga District Prosecutor’s Office, prosecutor Katarzyna Skrzeczkowska, said that the appeal in this case against the earlier judgment had been transferred to the District Court in Kraków.
A court in February found a IKEA HR department head in Kraków not guilty of having discriminated against a member of staff she fired after he had posted a citation from the Bible critical of homosexuality on the IKEA’s internal forum.
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Janusz Komenda was fired from his job just days after he cited the Bible to justify his opposition to the company’s policy on LGBT. The public prosecutor charged the HR officer with dismissing Komenda on grounds of religious discrimination.
According to the public prosecutor, the company’s HR officer was guilty of violating Komenda’s freedom of conscience by punishing him for expressing his religious point of view — the law forbids any discrimination based on religious grounds.
Komenda cited the Bible on homosexual practices, and underlined the fact that he was doing so as a practicing Catholic in line with his conscience. In his post on the company’s internal forum, he protested at being forced to celebrate the International Day Against Homophobia, which he said was in conflict with his faith.
In May 2019, IKEA published a communiqué on the International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia. Komenda responded on an internal forum arguing that accepting an ad promoting homosexuality, and what he said were other deviations, is immoral and cited verses from the Bible declaring same-sex relations as being immoral.
