The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Catholic school that terminated a teacher for having premarital sex, according to court documents.
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Even worse, if they do they feel like they did something wrong.
Hate the Catholic Church (I do) or religion as a whole (I also do), but per the article:
St. Theresa School argued Crisitello’s pregnancy violated the terms of her employment agreement, which required “employees to adhere to the teachings of the Catholic Church and refrain from premarital sex,” court documents say.
Agree or disagree, that all fine, but the exact reason for termination is verbatim in her contract which she signed well ahead of being fired. Is it prudish, archaic, and nonsensical? Yes. But did she sign a contract saying she wouldn’t do that and then get fired for doing that thing? Also yes.
Sometimes, the contents of contracts are illegal even when they are signed. It’s apparently not the case here according to the Court, but the question can be worth to ask.
You can’t sign away actual rights, but you can agree to pretty much anything else. It’s been well established that companies can fire you for any off-duty behavior they deem inappropriate, as long as the reason doesn’t conflict with a protected class. This is the same mechanism that allows people to be fired for being a Nazi or participating in the Jan 6th insurrection, even before being charged with a crime.
Being pregnant is a protected class under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, though: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/enforcement-guidance-pregnancy-discrimination-and-related-issues#IA1
While there can probably fire her for having premarital sex, they legally can’t fire her for being pregnant. If she became pregnant through IVF, for example, then there was no sex involved.
The idea that a job contract can dictate your sex life is completely fucking deranged.
I agree and I’m not saying it makes sense to rationale people but objectively in this case, the optics hold water. This is a fundamentalist Catholic school with nuns. The teacher was unmarried and was also pregnant. The optics of an unwed pregnant teacher, teaching kids whose parents put them in a Fundy school where pre-marital sex is an explicit no-no does put the staff in a very awkward position.
The awkward position of their evil patriarchial cannibal death cult beliefs being exposed?
Papists shouldn’t be allowed to run schools. No religion should.
Yes.
And while I agree with the idea that churches shouldn’t run schools, they do and have done for a long time, and as long as people keep sending their kids there, they will continue.
As I said, I agree completely. But the teacher was hired into that environment and knowingly signed a puritanesque ethics clause and broke it. That’s why the case was upheld ultimately.
It was part of their contract whether we agree or not.
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