General News teacher fired for child out of wedlock

I think that's unconstitutional.

 

Although I don't agree, she did sign a contract with a morals clause. If we're not talking about a rape situation here, but rather something she chose, then she did consciously decide to violate the terms of her employment. Still don't agree it was right to fire her, but it is certainly legal based on the contract terms she agreed to when she was employed.

The sticky bit is that because we're talking about a private Catholic school, you're starting to get into legitimate areas of religious freedom. It is within the school's rights to require that their employees uphold the religious standards taught there. Tough to tell your students that unmarried sex is bad when Miss Stanley is sporting the baby belly. If she didn't like the rules, she was free to seek employment somewhere else, but she didn't. She signed the morality clause (uuuuuugh, those things make my skin crawl), and then later chose to violate that clause by having sex with a partner she was not married to. When she conceived (note that getting an abortion is also a no-no and would get her fired if it became known), it eventually became impossible to hide that violation, and she was quite legally fired.

AGAIN, assuming that this was a choice on her part to have sex and not a pregnancy resulting from any kind of rape, or as in the case of the other teacher the article mentioned, the choice of a single woman to become a mother via artificial means. In either of those cases, no "sin" has occurred (at least by my understanding, but I'm protestant, not Catholic), and the legality of terminating her employment becomes highly problematic.

This is why I won't ever even apply for a position that has a morality clause built into the contract. If I'm not on the clock or in uniform, I'm not representing my employer and what I do is nobody's business but my own. I had to sign one of these things every year going through school, basically said I could be expelled if they determined I was behaving in a manner inconsistent with Christian values, on or off campus. There were several members of my senior class who were expelled because they had been seen at a party where alcohol was being served. Not seen drinking, mind you, just seen at the party. By teachers. Who were also at the party. Yeah.

 

It's a Catholic School...are you surprised?

 

Speaking purely from being fairly close to where this occurred for a decent amount of the year, the musings here (from even very Conservative folks) are that this was a very unjust and perhaps hypocritical firing.

While I don't work there, it seems to be widely accepted that the rest of the faculty are no more "perfectly Catholic" or abiding 100% by their "morality clause" than the teacher who got fired. She merely got caught - or maybe better put, gave them an "obvious" reason to let her go.

 

If she was a priest, she could have gone so far as to have fondled her class, and they would have just transferred her.

Women tend to get treated a lot more like shit in Catholicism...

 

EXACTLY, I was just about to say that.

 

Catholic.

 

Aren't there rules about what you get to put in a contract?

 

To an extent, yes, but again, because we're talking about a private (ie, not-in-receipt-of-government-funding) religious institution, the limits are less stringent. There are similar (if less ethically troublesome) behavioral clauses common to many public service roles, otherwise you would never see a public school teacher disciplined for coming to work drunk or high, or a police officer or soldier disciplined for "conduct unbecoming", which can be anything from getting wasted in a public bar to beating a spouse, if you've got a superior officer willing to look the other way.

As a society we accept and expect that people in positions of ... not just authority, but of high social responsibility (teachers, police, military, etc) should be held to a higher standard of behavior. Trouble is, we don't always agree on what that standard should be. When you start telling a religious institution "you're not allowed to hold your employees to the standards defined in your beliefs", you start getting into very sticky legal ground as far as the freedom to practice religion without government interference goes. Hypocrisy is (fortunately for actual humans) not illegal, and unequal enforcement of the rules is notoriously difficult to prove.

So, disgusting, but legal.

I absolutely 100% agree. This is why I won't work anywhere with a morality clause in the contract. Justice and legality rarely coincide, and there is no such thing as an employee who TOTALLY abides by their morality clause. We're all human, it's not possible. Sexual "sin" is a biggie, and never works in the girl's favor, because the evidence is so terrifically obvious, and it's human nature to pin that scarlet letter on the nearest available scapegoat.

Again, right there with ya. In your case, however, since you do not work specifically for a religious institution, were you to be disciplined or fired under that new morality clause, you *might* have some legal ground for fighting it. Maybe. Depends on the alleged infraction and just exactly how quick they are to pile on a load of other crap that you can't prove is false. My last job was at a Subway. A girl got fired because she slept with one of the managers, got pregnant by him, and went after him for child support. He summarily fired her to try to cover his "indiscretion". She quite rightly turned around and sued the hell out of the store. She got her job back, the manager in question was fired with prejudice (meaning he was blacklisted throughout the company), and Subway put together a trust fund for the kid.