Private School in Rockwall, TX Fires Coach for Being Pregnant Out of Wedlock
Rockwall, TX is an incredibly conservative town. I would know; I live there.
The small town located 30 minutes outside of Dallas now finds itself in the middle of a controversy surrounding a local private high school and its former head volleyball coach.
This fall, Cathy Samford, who has been coaching volleyball at Heritage Christian Academy (HCA) for the last three years–even earning Coach of the Year honors once, informed the school’s administrators that she was pregnant. The problem? She isn’t married.
As a result, HCA fired Samford for violating the morals clause included in the contract she signed with the school shortly after being hired. The private school is defending their decision to release Samford by claiming that, because they are a Christian school, they expect their teachers to act as role models and serve as “ministers in the classroom.”
“I looked it up and thought, ‘They can’t do this,’” Samford told WFAA, the Dallas-area news-station that first broke the story. “We all have different views and interpretations. It’s not necessarily the Christian thing to do to throw somebody aside because of those.”
The 29-year-old former coach and her lawyer are in the midst of filing a discrimination lawsuit against the school, however, their case could be complicated because the school is private, and historically, the Supreme Court has allowed private educational institutions more leeway in the people they hire and their reasons for firing them. As a matter of fact, they decided on a separate but similar case just last month, unanimously declaring that a private school has the right to include standards of conduct in their employee contracts.
Though Ms. Samford attempted to settle the suit out of court, the school was not willing to settle the case through mediation.
Needless to say, there is a lot of controversy surrounding this incident and wether or not the school should have the right to fire Ms. Samford for violating the morals clause in her contract.
What do you think? Share your comments below.
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