When the Nevada Vocational Rehabilitation Center allowed employees to personalize their signature lines on their emails, people were quick to take advantage of this freedom, WND reports.

People used it to express their diversity, and their pronouns, and everything was fine until a Christian decided to add a Christian symbol, the stylized fish, to her signature line reported the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ).

One unnamed government official found it offensive, and the woman was told to remove it.

When she complained that she was being treated unfairly because of her faith and requested a standardized signature line for all employees, the agency refused.

At this point, the ACLJ took on the case of the employee and sent a demand letter to the state agency “arguing that their actions of selectively targeting our client’s religious expression violate her First Amendment freedoms of speech and religious exercise.”

The Nevada agency has yet to respond.

But it’s similar to stories we have reported in the past of people’s religious freedoms being jeopardized because ‘one’ person found something offensive.

READ: Agency lets workers individualize email signature lines, then bans Christian symbol

The History of the Fish Symbol

The fish symbol, also called the “Ichthys”, was used by First Century Christians to symbolize their faith.

The letters ‘Ichthys’, which were sometimes written inside the fish symbol, stood for “Iesous Christos Theou Yios Soter,” or “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.”

Christians were under persecution at this time and the fish was a way people could identify other believers. And since other secular and even pagan groups used a fish icon as a symbol, it was initially not considered suspicious by Roman authorities.

Its popularity as a Christian symbol was based on several factors including Jesus feeding the five thousand with two fishes and five loaves and the Lord telling Peter that he would be ‘fishers of men’ (Matthew 4:19).

As well, the believers saw parallels with fish as they were fully immersed in water through water baptism. Ancient apologist and Christian theologian, Tertullian (155 AD to 220 AD) wrote:

“We, little fishes, after the image of our Ichthys, Jesus Christ, are born in the water.”

READ: What is the origin of the Christian Fish Symbol