A teacher fired from a Catholic school for becoming pregnant while unmarried has won a second revival of her discrimination lawsuit against the elementary school in Union County.
A state appeals court on Thursday ruled that the school cannot alone use the fact that a teacher is pregnant to determine she violated the school’s moral code.
And the court found the school, St. Theresa School in Kenilworth, has not produced evidence it’s taken any action to find out if other employees ever violated Catholic tenets or breached morals policies in the school’s employee handbook.
The published decision puts former teacher Victoria Crisitello’s case back on the docket in Superior Court of Union County. She seeks lost wages and punitive damages for emotional distress.
Crisitello first sued the school in 2014, the same year she was fired after disclosing to the principal, Sister Theresa Lee, that she was pregnant, which occurred during a discussion in which Lee asked Crisitello to take on more responsibilities, and Crisitello asking for a raise.
After hiring a married replacement teacher, Lee decided to fire Crisitello for having premarital sex, and told the teacher, “she was being terminated because she was pregnant and unmarried,” the court decision says.
In 2016, a Union County judge granted the school’s request to dismiss the case.
An appeals court reversed that decision in 2018, saying Crisitello had shown she had a possible claim under New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination, or LAD, and the trial judge erred in not allowing Crisitello to pursue evidence that she was being singled out or otherwise unfairly treated, even under the broad exceptions a religious institution enjoys in the LAD.
In other words, the court found that if no evidence exists that men are also terminated for engaging in premarital sex, a religious school violates the LAD if the school fires a woman for engaging in premarital sex simply because she is pregnant – since only women can become pregnant.
A second trial judge, however, in 2019 again ruled for the school, dismissing Crisitello’s case for a second time.
The school’s lawyers argued again that Crisitello received and understood the school’s code of ethics, she’d signed an acknowledgement that she received the school’s handbook and she knew was being terminated for violating Catholic tenets.
And, the trial judge found “no facts” in which a jury could find that St. Theresa’s discriminated against Crisitello due to her being pregnant, or unmarried. She was fired, the judge concluded, for “violating the tenets of the Catholic Faith.”
The appeals decision on Thursday again reversed the trial judge, saying the issue was that St. Theresa could not produce evidence it took any action against other employees for violating Catholic tenets, or the morals code in their own handbook.
“Instead, the evidence established that [St. Theresa] relied only upon knowledge of its female employees’ pregnancy and marital status as a basis to enforce its code of ethics and handbook requirements,” the decision says.
And, while the St. Theresa handbook lists several violations of its morals code, from committing crimes to adultery and flagrant promiscuity, illicit cohabitation to abuse of drugs and alcohol and many others, it does not actually mention “premarital sex” or that engaging in it would include termination.
Crisitello’s lawyer, Thomas A. McKinney of Castronovo & McKinney, sees the issue as the Scarlet Letter syndrome, that only women can sometimes show signs of premarital sex. “And for it she is punished, while male employees who engage in it are not – and that is illegal.”
“We’re pleased in this decision and the fight is not over,” he said.
St. Theresa’s lawyer, Christopher H. Westrick, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On an aside, McKinney said his client, who was engaged when fired, had the baby, and the baby was baptized at St. Theresa’s Roman Catholic Church, the parish affiliated with the school.
“The child was accepted by the church, but she was terminated from her job,” he said.
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Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com.