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Catholic School Teacher Fired For Facebook Posting Gets Unemployment Comp

By Howard M. Friedman

An Iowa administrative law judge has held that a fired Catholic school teacher is entitled to unemployment compensation benefits because the school failed to prove misconduct. Today's Des Moines Register reports that St. Edmonds Catholic School in Fort Dodge (IA) fired 8th-grade math teacher Abby Nurre because of the views she expressed online. Last August she response to a poll on Facebook in which she said she did not believe in God, miracles or heaven. Later she joined a discussion forum, Atheist Nexus, in order to post a link to a New York Times article that indicated the government had spent $2.3 million on prayer research.

The school's board of directors agreed with the principal that Nurre should be fired for violating a school policy against advocating "principles contrary to the dogmatic and moral teaching of the church." At the unemployment hearing, a school official testified: "When students in a Catholic school are running around the school with this survey and it says, 'Do you believe in God?' and it says, 'No,' well, that's in conflict with what we are teaching." The administrative law judge ruled, however, that the postings "did not involve publicly advocating principles contrary to the teachings of the church and did not involve immoral conduct."

Full post as published by Religion Clause on May 28, 2010 (boomark / email).