Nebraska city amends rule barring homeschool graduate from working as paid firefighter

The town of Fremont, Nebraska, has unanimously approved a resolution allowing homeschool graduates without diplomas from an accredited institution to work for the city after a homeschooled volunteer firefighter was excluded from a full-time firefighter position.

At a city council meeting Tuesday, Resolution 2026-256 was on the agenda, calling for the city to “amend current Human Resources hiring policy to recognize and include applicants […] who have successfully completed a high school educational course of study, with a graduation certificate lawfully issued by a non-approved or home school entity.”

After public comments from nearly a dozen community members, including Andrew Coates Coates and his father, Seth, the council approved the resolution 8-0.

Under its previous policy, the city elected “not to consider applicants without an accredited high school diploma or G.E.D. (high school equivalency), citing potential liability risks in hiring individuals without education ‘certification.’”

Andrew Coates appeared last week at the Pray Vote Stand Summit, hosted by the Washington-based Christian conservative advocacy organization Family Research Council (FRC) at Cornerstone Chapel in Leesburg, Virginia.

FRC President Tony Perkins introduced Coates as a 22-year-old volunteer firefighter who was “rejected from applying for a full-time job as a firefighter simply because his mom and dad love him enough to homeschool him and give him a godly education.”

Coates appeared at the summit with his parents just days before the Fremont City Council was set to take up the matter. Seth Coates said he was grateful that “we’ve just been rallied around, even by our own community, in a way that […] we never thought was even possible.”

“We’ve been working on this for five months,” Seth Coates added, saying he recently met with the city council and “within a very short time, a news article went out and […] the public became aware.”

“What’s amazing is it took five months of talking to the city about trying to fix this, but it took about five minutes for anybody to […] watch the news story and understand what the problem was,” he said.

Seth Coates expressed optimism that change was coming to Fremont, and that prediction proved correct. 

In his remarks before the city council Tuesday, Seth Coates said he learned "three things in Washington, D.C. this last weekend.”

“We pray for wisdom, courage and humility for those entrusted to serve our community,” the father said. “We vote, we participate and we pay attention, and we hold those who serve accountable to the people that they represent.”

He concluded: “We stand peacefully and lawfully for truth, accountability and good government. We stand with our neighbors, and we stand for the simple principle that government exists to serve its citizens and not to ignore them. Pray, vote, stand.”

Andrew Coates reacted to the vote Wednesday in an appearance on Perkins’ “Washington Watch” podcast.

“It’s really encouraging to see that Fremont’s taking the next step,” he said.

Perkins noted that attendance at the city council meeting was “according to city officials, the largest in memory.” Coates described the support he received as “really, really encouraging.”

As Coates appeared on stage at the summit, Perkins invited attendees to sign a petition urging the Fremont City Council to “Stand with Andrew Coates” and change its policy. Now that the policy has changed, the petition page lets supporters send the council a letter thanking members for reversing the “unfair policy.”

At the summit, Andrew Coates said the ordeal has taught him “patience and that God’s got a plan.”

“It’s not always a clear path, but He has a plan,” he stressed.