Pregnant teachers at a Northwest Side elementary school were targeted for firing by their principal. The civil rights lawsuit claims that Mary Weaver, the principal of Scammon Elementary School engaged in a pattern of inequity between 2009 and 2012, by targeting the pregnant teachers in schooling or joined back to job after their pregnancies.
The federal government has filed against the officials of Chicago Board of Education and Chicago Public Schools. The federal government alleges that the Principal took actions and removed eight teachers from their jobs from 2009 to 2012.
According to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, the Principal subjected the pregnant teachers during that time frame “to disparate treatment with regard to performance evaluation ratings”, and other matters, “there existed a regular, purposeful, and less-favorable treatment of teachers because of their sex (pregnancies).”
Two of those teachers filed inequity complaints with the Chicago Office to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. According to the lawsuit, the commission scrutinized complains and found rational causes to believe that discrimination happened against the pregnant teachers.
The case was then referred to the Department of Justice. Vanita Gupta, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement, “No woman should have to make a choice between her job and having a family.”
The Department of Justice is demanding a jury trial and wants a judge to order the Chicago Board of Education to “develop and implement appropriate and effective measures to prevent discrimination”, as well as giving compensation to affected teachers “to compensate them for pain and suffering caused by discriminatory conduct”
The government said it informed the district this past summer of its intent to file a complaint over a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which proscribed employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.
CPS does not undertake discrimination over pregnancy in either its 2009 or its 2012 amended on discrimination and sexual harassment policies, the lawsuit says. It asks the court to regulate the district to take an account to prevent the kind of detrimental treatment laid out in the objections.
CPS issued a proclamation and said “will not tolerate the kind of discrimination or retaliation that is alleged to have taken place at Scammon Elementary School”.
