The battle between church and state rages on as a Kentucky bank teller and her attorney allege that she was fired from her job simply for telling customers to “have a blessed day.”

CNN is reporting on the case of Polly Neace, an employee at U.S. Bank in Walton, Kentucky, who had been telling customers “have a blessed day” for several years.

“I say, ‘Have a blessed day,’ all of the time,” Neace told CNN. “All of the time. I don’t feel there’s any better kind of day you can have than a blessed day.”

Suddenly, in March 2011, she received a code of ethics violation from the bank which claimed that several customers complained about her using the phrase. She was reprimanded and told not to say it again. Angry about the reprimand, she filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), but stopped using the phrase. A few months later, after complaining about a situation at the bank, Neace says she jokingly told a manager that she might as well go back to saying “have a blessed day” and be fired.

She was fired the next day.

“I felt very persecuted,” Neace said.

She has now filed a lawsuit against U.S. Bank, claiming she was “discriminated against for exercising her religious freedoms.”

US Bank defended themselves in a statement, saying: “At U.S. Bank, we hold our employees to high ethical standards when interacting with customers and co-workers and take violations of these standards seriously.”

Some news outlets are reporting that also at issue in the case is another incident in which Neace reprimanded a customer who used the Lord’s name in vain and spoke to him about “salvation”.

However, during an interview with Fox News.com, her attorney, Jeff Blankenship, called this report a “red herring” and said it had nothing to do with her termination, which occurred months later.

Neace added that when she asked the person not to use the Lord’s name in vain, the customer was not offended and even wished her a “blessed weekend” on the way out of the bank.

She intends to fight this as far as it will go.

“I can’t back down from this,” Neace told CNN. “It’s the principle behind everything.”

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