from this article, which looks like a hypothetical straight out of my last exam. three things of note:
1) "A pregnant student who was banned from graduation at her Roman Catholic high school announced her own name and walked across the stage anyway at the close of the program."
- now, i saw "roman catholic high school" and thought... well, damn. they can do that. it's a religious school. the government probably can't get involved due to some entanglement with catholic teachings, blah blah blah...
but then i saw...
2) "The father of Cosby's child, also a senior at the school, was allowed to participate in graduation."
- and then some bells went off. hold on, maybe they can! i read a case called cline v. catholic diocese, where a woman was fired from a catholic school because, although she was married, she had "started to show" a little earlier than she was "supposed to." she sued under a title vii claim - pregnancy discrimination. then the catholic school said, no we fired her for having premarital sex, which is not a title vii issue, and they said that it was gender neutral. however, the school didn't apply the "premarital sex" equally to both sexes, and they got hosed.
under cline, rules against conduct like "premarital sex" must be applied equally to both sexes. this guy was allowed to walk while she was not. so the school has to come up with something else other than "premarital sex" -- and we already know that pregnancy discrimination is now allowed.
okay, one caveat: this would be a title ix case, not a title vii -- because we have a student here, not an employee.
i'm too lazy to look up anything on title vi or title ix, but i'm sure the tests are similar. if the race of the father is different from that of the mother, that could be a major thorn in the school's ass. this woman should SUE!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment