LOS ANGELES : Dismissal of Suit by Former Police Official Upheld

An appeals court Thursday upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit by former Los Angeles police official Robert Vernon, whose church activity had prompted a 1991 city investigation into whether his decisions as a high-ranking officer had been colored by his religious beliefs.

Vernon, a former assistant police chief who 15 years before had made a series of religious tapes for a Sun Valley church, had filed a $10-million suit against the city and the Police Commission after a published article about the tapes set off the five-month probe.

The suit was dismissed in 1992 when the city showed that the probe was limited to his on-duty job performance, that Vernon’s private religious activities never were monitored, and that the city reported at the inquiry’s end that the concerns that had spawned it were unsubstantiated.

On Thursday, the U.S. 9th District Court of Appeals upheld the lower court decision, ruling that Vernon “failed to demonstrate that the government’s action burdened his right to freely exercise his religion.”