Earl H. Carroll

On May 7, 1988, the New York Times reported a notable case involving the dismissal of an employee from a small mining company in Eloy, Arizona, following the employee's refusal to attend mandatory religious services. Carroll permanently enjoined the mining company from holding mandatory services at the Eloy plant as an unlawful employment practice in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination in employment based on religion.[4]

Starting in July 2000, the Maricopa County Sheriff's website hosted images broadcast from cameras installed in the Madison Street Jail, which housed only pretrial detainees. A group of pretrial detainees sued Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the Sheriff's office arguing that the internet broadcasts violated their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Carroll agreed and imposed an injunction. By a vote of 2 to 1, a 3-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Carroll's injunction, with the majority opinion stating: "We fail to see how turning pretrial detainees into the unwilling objects of the latest reality show serves any... legitimate goals... Inmates are not like animals in a zoo to be filmed and photographed at will...".[5]

In April 2008, Carroll granted in part and denied in part a motion for summary judgment by a group of Latino professors at Maricopa Community College, who had objected to their college's failure to discipline a math professor who distributed emails containing multiple racially charged and politically incorrect statements about immigration.[6] In May 2010, a 3-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the judge's ruling, holding that academic freedom protected the right of the math professor to speak his mind on controversial issues.[7]