Sometimes the headlines feel a little heavy-handed, don’t they? As Ocala-News details, a Wiccan employee is suing a Marion County furniture store for alleged religious discrimination and harassment, entangling tarot cards, Bible tracts, and the sort of proselytizing usually reserved for tent revivals and awkward family reunions. According to the lawsuit filed in Marion County court, Jessica Corbett claims her experience at White’s Furniture, Inc. wasn’t just a simple workplace dispute—it was a deeply peculiar, if not textbook, collision between divergent belief systems, all unfolding at the retail front desk.

The Curious Case of White’s Furniture

Corbett, who is described in the lawsuit as a former front desk clerk at White’s Furniture in Summerfield, alleges she was subjected to what court records cited in Ocala-News characterize as “unwanted ongoing and persistent harassment” due to her Wiccan faith. The complaint specifically names Arthur and Lee White, the store’s president and vice president, as well as several supervisors, as responsible for a pattern of behavior that might fit somewhere between a particularly grim staff meeting and a cautionary tale from HR.

In detail highlighted by Ocala-News, Corbett alleges the harassment ranged from overt mockery of her religious items—remarks like tarot cards being “evil,” witchcraft being “satanic” (in the Bible), encouragement to stop “practicing her witchcraft,” and dismissals of her tarot cards as “ridiculous”—to more subtle acts such as coworkers and management moving around her religious-based desk items. The complaint further contends that management’s response involved unsolicited theological advice: Corbett says she was encouraged to attend church, told that church and God were the “only way” to heaven, and provided with Christian literature and Bible tracts. At one point, it’s alleged Arthur White informed her that people at his church were praying for her, and she should “listen to Billy Graham.”

The outlet also documents that Corbett claims she was held to “different and harsher work rule standards,” and when she raised concerns about religious discrimination, the company did not conduct what the lawsuit calls a “reasonable, good faith investigation.” Corbett asserts that the cumulative effect of these experiences, combined with having her complaints allegedly brushed off, left her feeling “uncomfortable, embarrassed, humiliated, and intimidated at work.”

As for management’s actions regarding physical boundaries, the complaint (as summarized by Ocala-News) alleges Arthur White subjected Corbett to an unwanted sexual advance—a kiss on the lips without consent. Corbett maintains that her reporting of this incident led not to resolution but to “antagonistic and retaliatory behavior” by management, which, according to the suit, culminated in her termination in July 2024.

Religious Liberty, Florida Edition

All of these allegations come directly from the court complaint as recounted by Ocala-News. In their coverage, the outlet notes Corbett contends that the religious overtures, ridicule, and proselytizing were not only unwelcome but reached the legal threshold of being “so severe and/or pervasive” that they created a hostile or abusive work environment—one that altered the terms, conditions, or privileges of her employment.

The Florida Civil Rights Act, quoted in the report, prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of religion, including maintaining a hostile work environment. According to Corbett’s filed complaint, she is seeking not just compensatory and punitive damages (over $50,000 in damages, plus back and front pay), but a formal court determination that White’s Furniture violated her rights.

The overall picture, as described in the complaint and summarized by Ocala-News, is one in which Corbett says she endured social ostracism, hyper-scrutiny, and ultimately loss of employment for not conforming to her employer’s religious expectations. All this, the lawsuit claims, resulted in lost wages, emotional pain, and what her attorneys term “dignitary injury.”

It’s hard not to note the almost anachronistic setting painted by the filings—tarot decks being met with derision well into the 2020s, and prayer requests for a coworker’s soul becoming office chatter. Does this speak to lingering cultural anxieties, or perhaps something about the human impulse to define “belonging” through shared religious boundaries? One wonders whether such an environment at White’s was an outlier, or hints at deeper patterns yet to be brought to light.

More Than Just Witchcraft on Trial?

Amid these specific, legally-documented claims, the case itself becomes more than a one-off dispute about tarot and tracts. It puts on display the enduring friction between individual identity and workplace culture power structures. How often does a paycheck come tied to an unspoken, or in this case very outspoken, code of personal conformity?

The reporting from Ocala-News notes that the company has not made any public statement regarding the suit at this time. As details work their way through the court system and are subjected to scrutiny, more questions may emerge—for instance, was Corbett’s situation isolated, or does it hint at wider or systemic practices within the business?

From a cultural perspective, it is at least a little ironic: in an era of “bring your whole self to work” mantras, something as ordinary as a tarot deck still generates this much buzz and, allegedly, retaliation. Is it simply fear of difference, or the discomfort of seeing boundaries challenged in small, everyday ways?

Summing Up the Spellwork

What emerges from Ocala-News’s report is a workplace legal drama where competing spiritual frameworks—Wiccan and evangelical Christian—aren’t just background noise, but key battlegrounds. Corbett’s lawsuit offers an unvarnished look at the messy, sometimes surreal interface between law and belief on the job, spotlighting a tension that feels both oddly retro and stubbornly present.

As the courts decide which parts of these allegations are substantiated and who, if anyone, was truly “casting the first stone,” we’re left with an echo of the absurd: in 2025, tarot cards and religious diversity still have the power to disrupt, unsettle, and—at least for one Florida business—potentially summon a very modern reckoning.

Is it too much to ask that human resources departments be a little less enchanted—and a little more humane? Or is every office, somewhere beneath the spreadsheets, just a bubbling cauldron of its management’s peculiar energies? At this rate, maybe the best way to predict the future of workplace harmony really is to draw a few cards.