In America, religious liberty is not created equal. Recent events involving Kim Davis – a Christian clerk from Rowan County, Ky., who withheld marriage licenses from all couples and instructed her staff to do the same – and Charee Stanley – a Muslim flight attendant whose employer, ExpressJet, revoked her previously agreed upon accommodations after a complaint – illustrate that. Both women cited religious liberty as a defense for not performing job duties, but while the public hailed one as a religious martyr and tracked its support on social media through #ImWithKim, it condemned the other as an incompetent employee. One might assume the public’s response is proportional to the women’s respective offenses, but in reality, their punishments do not fit their crimes. Davis, in spite of her position as a government employee, refused to honor a ruling of the Supreme Court and denied loving, monogamous couples – same-sex and heterosexual alike – their right to legally express their commitment to one another; Stanley, on the other hand, refused to serve alcohol. While Davis basked in the exaltations of Republican presidential candidates Mike Huckabee (who stood beside her at her celebratory rally), Ted Cruz (who praised her for combating “judicial tyranny”) and Rick Santorum (who indirectly compared her to Martin Luther King, Jr.), Stanley was practically ignored. Davis was deprived of her Labor Day weekend – Stanley, her livelihood for a year. Davis has no constitutional support whatsoever – Stanley, the free-exercise clause of the First Amendment.

Two years ago, Stanley converted to Islam after working for ExpressJet for about a year, and until recently, her religion did not affect her work. In June, however, Stanley learned that Islam not only forbids consuming alcohol but also assisting others to consume it. Before changing her work behaviors, Stanley approached her superiors to discuss how she could observe her religious convictions and job duties simultaneously, Stanley’s lawyer, Lena Masri, told The Huffington Post. Her superiors at the airline directed her to make arrangements with her coworkers so other flight attendants would serve the alcohol and thus relieve Stanley of the obligation to do so. In August, however, according to a Sept. 6 article from CNN , ExpressJet received a blatantly Islamophobic complaint citing not only Stanley’s refusal to serve cocktails but also her headdress and “book with foreign writings.” In response, the airline promptly nullified their prior agreement, placed Stanley on an unpaid 12-month suspension and even threatened her with termination. Despite this, ExpressJet continues to deny wrongdoing on its part, insisting to The Huffington Post that it is “an equal opportunity employer.”

Unlike Davis, Stanley’s efforts to observe her own faith are “not at the expense of anyone else,” according to Masri. Stanley had been proactive in reaching an agreement with her coworkers and employers, and she had not forced any passengers to remain sober on her account. The issue arose only after ExpressJet received the Islamophobic complaint, and the airline’s response was to, as Masri so aptly put in an interview with The Huffington Post, suspend Stanley “for following [the airline’s] directions.”

Davis, on the other hand, did not clear her actions with her superiors prior to violating the law and failing to perform an essential job duty. To make matters worse, Davis exercised her “religious liberty” at the expense of everyone else in Rowan County, Ky. By denying marriage licenses to same-sex and heterosexual couples alike and instructing her six staff members to do the same, Davis infringed upon the rights of all couples seeking marriage licenses in Rowan County – including the two same-sex and the two heterosexual couples that eventually sued her through the American Civil Liberties Union and brought this injustice to light.

When viewed in this manner, Davis’s situation becomes a battle of supremacy between the First Amendment right to religion and the Supreme Court’s decision to allow same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges. In reality, however, this interpretation couldn’t be farther from the truth. The religion component of the First Amendment includes two clauses – the free-establishment clause and the free-exercise clause – neither of which, to Davis’s surprise and dismay, gives an individual the right to force their religious dogma upon another. The free-exercise clause protects Davis from having to participate in same-sex marriages in the private sector, but as a government official, Davis must abide by the law in the public sector regardless of her personal beliefs.

Ironically, while Davis and her supporters try to use the First Amendment as constitutional backing for her actions, that very amendment actually works against them. The free-establishment clause prohibits one person or institution from forcing another to abide by a specific religion’s convictions. As such, Davis not only violated a ruling of the Supreme Court but also the First Amendment. Consequently, the argument of many, including presidential hopeful Ted Cruz, that Davis has upheld the U.S. Constitution by valiantly resisting “judicial tyranny” crumbles.

While Davis can’t claim the First Amendment, Stanley, in fact, can. Her actions do not violate the free-establishment clause because, although her religion states she can neither consume nor serve alcohol, she does not attempt to force anyone else to abide by her religious restrictions. Additionally, the free-exercise clause should, in theory, protect her actions, and it did at one point: ExpressJet had previously cooperated with a reasonable accommodation (allowing the other flight attendants to serve alcohol in Stanley’s stead) in compliance with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The only reason ExpressJet revoked its prior accommodation was because it received a complaint which criticized Stanley for practicing her religion.

Islamophobia affected not only Stanley’s punishment and public image but also the media’s portrayal of her situation. In Google, under the “News” tab, a search for “Kim Davis” yields results in which all of the headlines contain her full name and few contain her religion. For Stanley, the inverse is true: A search for “Charee Stanley” yields results in which all of the headlines contain her religion and few contain her name. In this sense, her religion is more important than her name.

Combined, the inequality of treatment between these two women by employers, the public, politicians and the media suggests a level of discrimination against Stanley on an individual basis, but when examined with a wider lens, Stanley’s story seems to be a common symptom of a much larger issue: widespread Islamophobia in America. In the five years immediately following 9/11, violations of Muslim Americans’ civil rights increased by 674 percent, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, and in the same report, the ACLU recorded that “69% of women who wore hijab reported at least one incident of discrimination.”

American society – intentionally and unintentionally – treats Christians and Muslims differently. The contrasts in Davis’s and Stanley’s parallel situations reveal that, in this case, a Christian government employee can defy the U.S. Constitution in more ways than one, enjoy the support of leading presidential candidates and much of the public and escape with minimal consequences to her life – including keeping the job she failed to perform; a Muslim flight attendant, on the other hand, can obtain permission from her employers to practice her First Amendment right to free-exercise of religion only to be ignored by politicians, vilified by the public and deprived of her livelihood for a year or more when a coworker decides he or she doesn’t like the flight attendant’s headdress and “foreign writings.”