HACKENSACK, N.J. (AP) A woman is suing a Roman Catholic school in New Jersey, alleging the school violated the state’s discrimination law when she was sacked because she’s married to a woman. The plaintiff also insists because she did not teach religious education, her sexual orientation and “marriage” to a woman should not affect her employment.
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The court battle involving an openly lesbian Catholic teacher is continuing to escalate as attorneys representing the school are urging that the case be dismissed.
The school says she was sacked, not because she’s gay, but because she is in a same sex marriage.
Westrick said his clients didn’t violate the state’s anti-discrimination law because it allows churches to require their workers to abide by the tenets of the Catholic faith.
In January, her wife’s sister created a Facebook page containing wedding pictures from Drumgoole and Jaclyn Vanore’s August 2014 wedding that she shared with two school Facebook pages and Vail’s personal Facebook page. According to New Ways ministry, a pro-LGBT dissident blog that self-describes as Catholic, over 50 Catholic school employees have been released since the June 2015 High Court ruling based exclusively on their entering into same-sex “marriages”.
Drumgoole said other faculty members remain employed even though they don’t abide by the church’s tenets, and that she feels as though she was singled out. Some are divorced, at least one has a child out of wedlock, and some live with members of the opposite sex without being married, he pointed out, while at least one other staffer is gay.
Attorneys for Drumgoole argued that because the school circulated other policies against discrimination that they are bound by all of the New Jersey Laws Against Discrimination and they can’t “pick and choose what they want”, Eric Kleiner told the court Friday. The case, first reported by The Record, has drawn regional attention and was widely covered by television and radio reporters on Friday.
A graduate of the school herself, Drumgoole told The Record she was “proud to be a part of such a diverse school community that exposed students to so much, and I also felt it was an honor to serve my alma mater”.
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Her suit seeks lost wages and unspecified damages, but she is not trying to return to work at Paramus Catholic. “She notified school administrators that three 17-year-old students had been sexually abused by two Paramus Catholic employees who were chaperoning a trip to Europe in 2011”, the paper reports.
