Business · Los Angeles, CA Metro · August 18, 2026
Ex-In-N-Out Cook Sues, Says She Was Fired Over Sunday Church Requests
What Alinsky tactic is being used
2 of the thirteen rules are in play here — campaigns rarely run just one.
Rule 4
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
The whole case turns on the employer's own rule book: Rodriguez alleges she was suspended and then fired over a June 24 food-handling incident while coworkers who did similar things got only warnings, and that a five-year Sunday schedule was reversed by one new manager. A written policy applied unevenly is exactly the gap a Title VII or state accommodation claim lives in — the employer is being asked to live up to what it says it does. In-N-Out has not responded and nothing is proven, but the alleged gap between stated rule and actual practice is the pressure point.
Counter-Rule 4 · Radical Integrity
Close the gap between stated values and actual practice before anyone else finds it. This tactic only works where the gap is real.
If you supervise anyone — at a business, a school, or a church with paid staff — close that gap this month before someone else finds it. Pull your written religious-accommodation and progressive-discipline policies, then check the last three comparable incidents: were they handled the same way, and is the decision-maker's reasoning written down anywhere? Put your Sunday and holy-day scheduling practice in writing rather than leaving it to whoever holds the schedule, and note the date you did it.
Rule 13
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
The alleged mechanism is isolation of one person: nearly five years with no discipline, then a single manager makes her Sunday availability the issue, a first write-up follows, complaints to upper management in December make things worse, and by July 3 she is out — while, she says, others doing the same thing stayed. One worker frozen as the problem, personalized to her churchgoing, is the pattern she is describing in the complaint.
Counter-Rule 13 · Radical Solidarity
Stand publicly with whoever has been singled out. Isolation is the whole mechanism; refusing it disarms the tactic.
Refusing isolation is concrete: if a coworker at your job or in your congregation is in this position, write a dated, factual account of what you personally saw — schedule postings, who else did the same thing, who said what and when — and tell them you are willing to be named as a witness. Offer a shift swap, and pass along the EEOC's number (1-800-669-4000) or a legal-aid referral. Stand with the person without pronouncing on the employer's guilt; the claims here are unproven.
Chapter 3 sets out the rules; Chapter 15 answers each of them in turn. This is that pairing applied to this story.
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