Well, I sure hope the Virgin Mary doesn’t apply for a job there.
I guess this teacher did not realize that it is the “norm” for catholic couples to have their first baby be anywhere from a few weeks or months “premature”. It’s amazing how many “premature” 9 pound babies catholic newlyweds produce!
She was guilty of too much honesty when the school administration inquired about exactly when she had sex. She should have told them it was not any of their business. Or:
“I’m sorry, I do not discuss sex with my work colleagues, and I"m quite shocked about your prurient interest.”
Or even kiss your girlfriend in Saudi Arabia. A man there who was caught dong that very thing in a mall was just sentenced to four months in jail and 90 lashes.
I agree with your sentiment, but not the outcome. The people of Florida (via the courts) won’t be deciding on fornication. They will be deciding if a Christian school can have an employment policy against pre-marital sex.
While I’m sure that 99 percent of us have done it, it is still not a protected activity under federal or Florida state law. I can’t see a successful lawsuit here.
It looks like Florida considers marrital status to be protected in terms of employment. Seems to me that if you can’t make hire/fire decisions based on marriage, then you can’t make hire/fire decisions based on marriage.
“discriminate against any individual with respect to compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s … marital status …”
So, it would be fine to fire someone for having sex, but not for having pre-marital sex. 
I don’t think this is correct. Marital status protection says you can discriminate against somebody based on whether they are married or single. It doesn’t extend protection to whether or not they’re having sex with somebody.
They fired her because she was single, if she was married, she would still be employed.
It looks like they’ll be deciding multiple things, including if the school had such a policy. The teacher says that there was no explicit rule forbidding premarital sex in the teacher’s employment agreement. They’ll also be deciding the legality of such a rule in light of the state’s protection of marital status. And then they’ll be deciding if the school had grounds to fire the teacher. And then they’ll be deciding if the school violated the teacher’s privacy by telling people the circumstances under which she was dismissed. Lots of things to decide.
If you’re firing someone based solely upon whether or not they were married when they did something, you’re discriminating based upon marital status.
But, she is married. They fired her because of a sexual act before she was married. I agree with** Little Nemo**. I can’t see this lawsuit working because they didn’t say: “We only hire single people” or “We fired you because you are married” or any of the combinations thereof.
Terminating someone for a behavior that would have been acceptable or unacceptable at the time of the incident based on marital status is still a policy based on marital status an IMHO should be protected. If I was her legal team, first thing I would do is pull the marriage certificates of every member of the school administration team, and the birth certificates of all their children. Betcha dollars to donuts someone else is gonna have some explainin to do.
But you are taking that a step further than the law does. The law says you can’t discriminate based on marital status. It doesn’t take the next step and say that Conduct X is protected based upon marital status.
Would you say that a Christian school couldn’t have an employment policy based upon adultery?
The problem is that their proof of the conduct isn’t simply in her statement, but in the fact that she was pregnant, and pregnancy discrimination is also illegal. So she was fired for being single and pregnant simultaneously, thereby running afoul of two areas where the legislators of Florida have decided that people should be protected in the workplace.
Adultery is a different case, because there has never been any sort of legal protection for it, and in some places, it’s still a criminal offense. (A NY state woman was charged with it just this past week.)
And either way you slice it, if the school wants to have rules against teachers fornicating or adulterizing, then they need to spell those rules out in black and white. No muddled “teachers are expected to live a moral life” blanket rules, and that’s really where she’s going to get them. If it didn’t say “no fornicating” or even something less explicit but commonly interpretable to include premarital sex like “no sexual immorality” then they’re toast.
There goes out Labor Day weekend vacation…
This I agree with. Hamilton’s strongest case will be to argue that the school never told her that permarital sex would be considered a violation of their rules. The school will have a near impossible task trying to argue that society generally opposes premarital sex - that train left the station forty years ago.
Hamilton’s other strong point will be the privacy issue. Even if the school was justified in firing her, what’s their justification going to be for publically stating why they fired her? They can’t even argue that the damage was insignificant because their whole argument is based on the premise that premarital sex is a serious offense.
And this isn’t even getting into the racial issue.