The New Jersey Supreme Court sided with a Catholic school that fired a pregnant teacher for having premarital sex

The New Jersey Supreme Court has sided with a Catholic school that fired a pregnant unmarried teacher, determining that the termination was legally permissible. The ruling brings a years-long legal battle — which brought discourse about religious freedom and the separation of church and state to a national stage — to an end.

In 2011, Victoria Crisitello accepted a part-time job as a toddler caregiver at St. Theresa School, the Catholic school in Kenilworth, Union County, that she attended as a child. Three years later, she was approached about a full-time position teaching art to elementary schoolers. She told her principal that she would need a raise commensurate with her new responsibilities and that she was pregnant and would need to account for child care with her new work schedule.

Instead of a raise, Crisitello was fired.

She was told that she had violated St. Theresa’s code of ethics by having premarital sex. Crisitello was engaged to her baby’s father and said she did not discuss her marital status at work. She filed a lawsuit in 2014. Her lawyer — along with civil rights groups including the ACLU of New Jersey — said the firing violated the state’s anti-discrimination statute and raised double standards because only people who are visibly pregnant could be held by the school’s standards against premarital sex. The lawsuit remained in limbo for years, bouncing between New Jersey’s trial and appellate courts.

But Monday, the New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the firing was justified because Crisitello “knowingly” violated Catholic law and because New Jersey’s anti-discrimination law offers exceptions to religious organizations.

As noted by the New York Times, the court said that the state’s anti-discrimination law and its exception for religious organizations allows St. Theresa’s to require its employees to abide by the rules of the Catholic church. Crisitello signed an agreement when she was hired that she’d abide by the teachings of the Catholic church.

Peter G. Verniero, the lawyer representing St. Theresa’s, applauded the court’s ruling.

“We are pleased that the Supreme Court upheld the rights of religious employers to act consistent with their religious tenets, and that St. Theresa School did so here,” he said in a statement.

Crisitello’s lawyer and other groups voiced their disappointment, along with concerns about the ruling’s potential ramifications.

“We don’t think that, going forward, a pregnant woman will be treated equally based on these policies of the employment,” Crisitello’s lawyer, Thomas A. McKinney, said in a statement. McKinney added that the court’s decision could impact “all different types of religious entities that employ people,” including hospitals.

“If a woman is pregnant and unmarried and working at a Catholic hospital, she can be terminated,” he said. “Our biggest issue always with this case was that you have a policy that’s only being implemented against unmarried pregnant women.”

In a statement, the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office said it was “disappointed” with the court’s decision.

Alexander Shalom, director of Supreme Court advocacy for the ACLU of New Jersey, also voiced disappointment.

“While we recognize that the United States Supreme Court’s prior decisions provide broad latitude to religious employers regarding hiring and firing, we believe the N.J. Supreme Court could have, and should have, held that a second-grade art teacher was entitled to the protections of the Law Against Discrimination,” Shalom told several media outlets.

As reported by the New York Times, the court’s decision follows suit with several recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that favor religious rights.

Experts say New Jersey’s anti-discrimination law has a wider scope of exceptions for religious employers than other states or federal laws.

Columbia Law School professor Katherine Franke, who specializes in religious liberty law and nondiscrimination law, told the Times that the ruling might inspire New Jersey lawmakers to try to narrow the law.

“We’re in a period where religious organizations are trying to push the boundaries of what it means for them to be exempt from laws that apply to all the rest of us,” Franke said. She added that the court’s ruling could be viewed as a “green light” to discriminate against LGBTQ+ employees or people in interfaith marriages.