A former teacher is suing the Archdiocese of Louisville for gender discrimination after she said she was fired for being an unwed mother.
Sarah Syring was teaching middle school English at St. Andrew Academy when she became pregnant in August 2020. She told principal Stuart Cripe about her pregnancy in October 2020 so she could start the paperwork to request maternity leave.
The principal was originally supportive and excited for Syring, but she said his tone changed a few days later in a meeting with Fr. Chris Lubecke.
"They said 'No, no way. We can't have her in front of the children in her condition,'" Syring told WDRB.
The teacher is unmarried but has been in a relationship with her boyfriend of many years, according to the lawsuit. After a few meetings with Cripe and Lubecke, Syring said that she'd have to resign or be terminated in December because being an unwed mother violated the archdiocese's employee handbook.
"I didn’t want to leave, and I didn’t want anyone to think that I wanted to leave. If they didn’t want me to teach in front of the students because I was showing a pregnancy, then they were going to have to terminate me," she told the Louisville Courier Journal.
She could have stayed if she married, but Syring didn't want her relationship rushed because of her job.
Syring was eventually fired in January, but she thinks it was unfair that the school singled her out. In her suit, Syring points to others who were allowed to keep their jobs despite violating the employee handbook, including an openly gay teacher and a principal at another Catholic school who was married and openly having an affair.
"The employee handbook doesn't control the situation. There are laws in Kentucky, laws in this country that prohibit discrimination against women, and that's what's happening here," said Syring's attorney Stewart Abney.