{"id":4746,"date":"2006-02-10T00:06:21","date_gmt":"2006-02-10T00:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/youre-fired.html"},"modified":"2006-02-10T00:06:21","modified_gmt":"2006-02-10T00:06:21","slug":"youre-fired","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/youre-fired.html","title":{"rendered":"You’re Fired"},"content":{"rendered":"

Naomi Schaefer Riley on Catholic schools being sued by fired teachers. <\/a>Both cases have been blogged on here in the past: the Queens teacher fired for being pregnant and single, and the Wilmington, DE teacher fired from an Ursuline-run high school for signing an abortion-rights petition and volunteering at Planned Parenthood. Here’s the interesting part of the piece:<\/p>\n

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Ms. Curay-Cramer is arguing that she was discriminated against because of her views on abortion. Her lawyer, Thomas Neuberger, has suggested that such views, as well as her Planned Parenthood activities, are protected by provisions in the Civil Rights Act, particularly those ensuring equal treatment for women who are pregnant–and, apparently, those who support such treatment. This part of his argument feels quite strained. <\/p>\n

But there is another part of the plaintiff’s case that is less implausible. Mr. Neuberger claims that Ursuline is not entitled to the religious exemption from nondiscrimination statutes because it is not religious enough<\/em>. He notes that the school is independent of the diocese; it hires non-Catholics; and it doesn’t offer employment contracts with a "cardinal’s clause." Such a clause, not uncommon in the workings of religious schools, would mandate that teachers avoid taking a public stance against the church’s teachings. <\/p>\n

Mr. Picarello, defending Ursuline Academy, believes that this argument cannot stand. "Ever since Mitchell v. Helms," <\/em>he says, citing a 2000 case in which the Supreme Court upheld a program giving public dollars to religious schools, "the court has suggested that it doesn’t want to make distinctions between super-religious and lukewarm religious." It shouldn’t matter which doctrines Ursuline chooses to uphold. Theoretically, the school could fire someone for supporting the death penalty but keep someone who doesn’t go to confession. "It can be done retail rather than wholesale," he says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Naomi Schaefer Riley on Catholic schools being sued by fired teachers. Both cases have been blogged on here in the past: the Queens teacher fired for being pregnant and single, and the Wilmington, DE teacher fired from an Ursuline-run high school for signing an abortion-rights petition and volunteering at Planned Parenthood. Here’s the interesting part…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nYou're Fired - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/youre-fired.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"You're Fired - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Naomi Schaefer Riley on Catholic schools being sued by fired teachers. Both cases have been blogged on here in the past: the Queens teacher fired for being pregnant and single, and the Wilmington, DE teacher fired from an Ursuline-run high school for signing an abortion-rights petition and volunteering at Planned Parenthood. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4746\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}