As we’ve reported before, the CSU has had a problem with refusing to allow potential employees to modify the state’s loyalty oath to fit the employee’s religious needs, despite the fact that the UC system has had no problem accommodating such religious freedoms. Eventually People For the American Way got involved and today they reached an agreement with CSU that gets one of the fired employees a job this fall and ensures that CSU will finally begin properly administering the oath:

CSU has agreed to appoint [Wendy] Gonaver as a temporary lecturer teaching two classes in American Studies and Women’s Studies during the fall 2008 semester, and to allow the attachment of a revised explanatory statement to the oath that CSU agrees does not undermine or qualify the oath….

Judith E. Schaeffer, Legal Director of People For the American Way Foundation and Gonaver’s attorney, said the settlement clears the way for others with religious or other objections to the oath to attach an explanatory statement, as long as the statement does not undermine or qualify the oath.

This is a welcome result – Wendy Gonaver should never have been fired and the CSU should have had better practices to handle religious objections to the oath. Still, this doesn’t mean everything is now fine – the loyalty oath still exists, and remains an obsolete relic of a McCarthyist past. California legislators should ramp up their efforts to do away with this pointless oath, so that schools and teachers can get on with the business of educating their students.