Court: Christian University Illegally Discriminated Against Unmarried Pregnant Instructor
A former assistant professor at Northwest Christian University in Oregon, who sued the school for $650,000 arguing that she was fired for getting pregnant out of wedlock, will get her day in court after a federal judge ruled last Thursday that the university engaged in illegal discrimination based on marital status.
Prior to her firing in 2015, Coty Richardson, the professor, had worked at the Christian school as an instructor in exercise science for about four years. She explained that when she got pregnant in early 2015 she had no immediate plans to marry the father of her unborn child, who lived in Seattle, Washington at the time.
According to the lawsuit, when Richardson told her supervisors that she was pregnant, she was instructed to either marry her partner of 12 years immediately, declare the pregnancy a mistake, or end the relationship. She was fired after she refused....