Religious School’s Right to Screen Employees Upheld

The New Jersey Supreme Court made a notable ruling to uphold a religious school’s right to screen their employees on following their faith and teachings.

At issue was a pregnant, unmarried woman having been fired as an art teacher and caregiver for toddlers at St. Theresa School, a Catholic elementary school in Newark, New Jersey. State Justice Lee Solomon ruled the school retains the right under state law to require its staff to abide by Roman Catholic tenets.

“The religious tenets exception allowed St. Theresa’s to require its employees, as a condition of employment, to abide by Catholic law, including that they abstain from premarital sex,” Solomon wrote in his ruling that premarital abstinence was a “condition of her employment.” (Excerpt from NEWSMAX.)