We have a moral code of conduct at our office. I fire people if they have extramarital affairs. The hilarious thing is I put that on Twitter and people go, “Won’t you get sued for that?” Uh, no, you’re allowed to discriminate against infidelity. I’ve got a right to tell my employees whatever I want to tell them. They freaking work for me. This is an employment-at-will state, which means if I decide I don’t like people with green eyes, I don’t have to hire you. I don’t have to keep you anymore. Dave Ramsey
In the fall of 2018, it was discovered by financial guru Dave Ramey that one of his employees, bestselling author, and radio host Chris Hogan, had cheated on his (now-ex) wife Melissa with a former employee. According to the company’s values and long-held practice, infidelity always results in termination, and so this should have been a swift sacking. Yet Hogan was a star and a major draw, with a tour planned for his book ‘Everyday Millionaire’ just months away.
Rather than treat him like the rest of the employees, where Ramsey previously said in his book EntreLeadership, “I won’t let a team member stay if they decide to have an affair. If their spouse can’t trust them, neither can I” and having a long-term policy of terminating associates who break that moral code, Hogan received special treatment and was allowed to go on tour, with the company unwilling to sacrifice their cash cow, justifying their decision because the affair happened years ago.
After the tour, Hogan took a 30-day sabbatical, with Ramsey informing staff that there was nothing “earth-shattering or evil” about the decision to take time off, but that he simply needed some time off.
In May 2021, Ramsey Solutions was sued by former employee Caitlin O’Connor. She was fired by Dave for that very same thing; breaking the company moral code by having pre-marital sex, and decided to go to court on the grounds that she was unjustly terminated. Looking at the optics of having a well-known policy of firing their staff who fornicate, while making an exception for Hogan, they let him go shortly after.
As part of discovery for this lawsuit, several emails and a deposition were released, including this admission by Ramsey, who was nervous about the Hogan situation being discovered.
“I am afraid we are being played after we were warned that he (Chris Hogan) is a world-class liar and manipulator…. We owe God to steward a huge situation with wisdom and thoroughness. If it breaks that he has done some huge things and it looks like we did not dig for truth, and checked boxes, we will not only have lost (Hogan), but will also have a legitimate PR problem of scale, because we covered up a horrible act to line our own pocketbooks.”
During the deposition, O’Connor’s lawyers spend most of the time hammering away at the fact that Ramsey Solutions had a policy to prohibit pre-marital sex but made exceptions for years for Hogan, who is revealed to have engaged in multiple instances of adultery and sexual behavior. This includes in 2018, where Hogan was discovered to have received oral sex from another woman. But because this was not ‘intercourse’ he likewise was not terminated.
Under oath, Ramsey reiterates numerous times that the policy of firing those who violate the moral clause was a matter of principle and something the company was proud of, defining the culture.
If we hold — when we hold ourselves out as Christians to the community, if an employee is doing something that is contrary to standard Christian beliefs, normative Christian beliefs, then the people that we deal with in the Christian community would feel that we are hypocrites, and it would damage our brand….
and
A large portion of our customer base — in the early days the largest portion of our customer base — are Bible-believing Christians.· And they expect –they — they hold us up to that standard.· And if someone inside of our organization is damaging that brand, it’s a business decision to not retain them…our condoning people having sex outside of marriage can damage our brand.
But condone they did. For years. They only terminated Hogan when the heat and scrutiny go too much. In the deposition, Ramsey acknowledges that Melissa did come to him claiming that her husband had cheated on her again, but he didn’t believe her in light of Chris’ denials and because of the way she acted when she did so. Ramsey described Melissa as:
“Erratic. Completely out of control. Inconsistent. Changing her story. (She) was not a credible source to make a decision on someone’s life with.” (She) lost her credibility because of her behaviors. And so we couldn’t tell any — if anything was saying was true. So she said a lot of things about a lot of people, including me, that weren’t true.”
Later he calls her this nasty little invective:
Melissa disputes the claims that she was acting angry or erratically. She admits she was upset, particularly after being doubted and gaslit after she gave them documentation of her husband’s wrongdoing, only to be accused by the board of making up false claims about Chris and trying to cause trouble. This experience, she would later note, would feel like she was being emotionally raped. Later, Ramsey would disparage her by announcing to the entire staff that she and her husband were going through a “nasty divorce” and that there “there are no angels in this story,” suggesting equally bad behavior.
Clearly, not all is well, honorable ,or upright at Ramsey Solutions.
