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Ex-Toll Collector Claims She Was Banned From Saying 'God Bless You' to Drivers — and Now She's Suing

Ex-Toll Collector Claims She Was Banned From Saying 'God Bless You' to Drivers — and Now She's Suing

A former part-time New Jersey toll collector who quit her job last month is suing the state's Turnpike Authority after she claims a supervisor told her to stop saying "God bless you" to drivers passing through.

Cynthia Fernandez, 34, told media earlier this month that she would regularly wish drivers well, saying "Have a good day, God bless you," as they drove past — but that her boss told her she needed to stop.

According to Fernandez, her supervisor pulled her aside and warned her that invoking the Lord might offend some customers traveling on New Jersey's Garden State Parkway.

"He told me he wanted to talk to me, that I couldn’t say, ‘God bless you,’ anymore to customers because somebody might get offended," the mother of three told WCBS-TV.

Her attorney, Greg Noble, is arguing that she was simply expressing her Christian views by invoking the Lord and that he's concerned over the potential that her First Amendment rights were violated.

"I feel like I’m taking a stand for God," Fernandez told News 12 New Jersey.

But a Garden State Parkway spokesman told WCBS-TV that there are no policies against saying "God bless you.

And Tom Feeney, a spokesman for the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, said that Fernandez left her post September 7 after only six weeks on the job after reportedly telling her supervisors that she needed more hours or would need to resign, according to New Jersey Advance Media.

"[Fernandez] turned in a written resignation that again mentioned nothing about what the supervisor allegedly said to her," Feeney told the outlet. "Two days later, before the end of what was supposed to be her second-to-last shift, she complained to the supervisor for the very first time about what he had allegedly said to her a month before and then walked off the job."

(H/T: Daily Mail)

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