Dave Ramsey Accused Of 'Cult-Like' Working Environment

Radio hostDave Ramsey has been accused of firing an employee for wearing masks at the office and for wanting to work from home during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the NY Times citing a federal lawsuit filed this week.

The lawsuit said that Mr. Ramsey, an evangelical Christian and the owner of Ramsey Solutions, a personal finance advice empire that he started in 1992, ran a “cultlike” environment where employees who worried about the pandemic were accused of “weakness of spirit” and told to pray if they wanted to ward off the virus.

Dave Ramsey

The complaint was filed in U.S. District Court in Tennessee on Monday by Brad Amos, a former employee at the company, which is based near Nashville. A lawyer for Mr. Ramsey said the case was without merit and that the company has followed guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention throughout the pandemic.

Amos, 45, said he was hired in 2019 as a senior video editor making $90,000 a year, then was fired in July 2020, after repeatedly telling his supervisors that he wanted to work from home to protect the health of his wife and son, in accordance with his own Christian beliefs.

Ramsey’s company “terminated Plaintiff for taking scientifically prescribed precautions, as required by his sincerely held religious beliefs, in the Covid pandemic rather than relying on prayer alone to protect himself,” the lawsuit stated.

“Employees who wore masks to meetings were mocked and derided,” according to the lawsuit.

Daniel Cortez, general counsel for Ramsey Solutions, described Mr. Amos’s claims as “outlandish” and said they had “absolutely no merit.”

Ramsey, who preaches that people can become millionaires by living simply and spending thriftily, has a weekly audience of about 23 million people through his podcasts and radio and online presence, according to Ramsey Solutions.

His advice, which he also describes in his best-selling books and in a nine-week course called Financial Peace University, is steeped in an ethos that paying off debt and saving money is both common sense and ordained by God.