Anti-Abortion Group Backs Fired Pregnant Teacher

Feb. 20, 2006 — -- When Michelle McCusker, 26, got a job teaching preschool at St. Rose of Lima, a Catholic school in Queens, N.Y., she fulfilled a longtime dream.

"That's what I want to do, to be able to give something to children, it's amazing," McCusker said.

But then McCukser -- who is Catholic and single -- became pregnant. She decided to keep the baby and informed the school early in the school year.

The school -- backed by the Brooklyn Diocese, which oversees Catholic churches in the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens -- fired her.

"The school requires its teachers to convey the faith, to convey the gospel values and Christian traditions of the Catholic faith," said Frank DeRosa, a spokesman for the Diocese of Brooklyn.

The teachers' handbook clearly states that teachers "must convey the teachings of the Catholic faith by his or her words and actions," De Rosa added, and by having out-of-wedlock sex McCusker was not conveying the teachings of the faith.

McCusker was devastated to think that she'd have to leave the school, especially mid-year.

"Just knowing that I wouldn't be able to see my kids and finish out the school year with them," McCusker said in an interview with ABC News, while crying. "It really ... and it was my first teaching job so, and they took it away."

McCusker and the New York Civil Liberties Union are suing the school, claiming gender discrimination.

"Michelle McCusker was fired from her job as a pre-K teacher because she was pregnant," said Donna Lieberman, an attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union. "This is a policy that the church applies to women but not to men.

"Only women employees are subject to being fired for being pregnant or having engaged in non-marital sex," she added. "They don't apply that policy to male employees. That's gender discrimination. It has nothing to do with religion."

In a similar case in 2003, the NYCLU filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of the unmarried pregnant director of an afterschool program in Buffalo demoted by the Catholic charity that employed her. In that case, the EEOC found that the charity had violated federal anti-discrimination laws.