The Supreme Court of New Jersey on Monday sided with a Catholic school that fired a teacher in 2014 because she became pregnant while unmarried, according to court documents.
Victoria Crisitello began working at St. Theresa School in Kenilworth as a toddler room caregiver in 2011. She was approached about a full-time job teaching art in 2014, court documents show. During a meeting with the school principal about the position, Crisitello said she was pregnant. Several weeks later, Crisitello was told she'd violated the school's code of ethics, which required employees to abide by the teachings of the Catholic Church, and lost her job.
Crisitello filed a complaint against the school, alleging employment discrimination in violation of New Jersey's Law Against Discrimination, which prohibits unlawful employment discrimination based on a number of factors, including an individual's sex (including pregnancy), familial status, marital/civil union status, religion and domestic partnership status.
But in a unanimous decision, the state Supreme Court ruled the firing was legal because the law provides an exception for employers that are religious organizations, allowing those organizations to follow "tenets of their religion in establishing and utilizing criteria for employment."
"The religious tenets exception allowed St. Theresa's to require its employees, as a condition of employment, to abide by Catholic law, including that they abstain from premarital sex," the justices ruled.
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