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My Mom Was Fired From Her Teaching Job in 1971 For Being Pregnant

My Mom Was Fired From Her Teaching Job in 1971 For Being Pregnant

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Elizabeth Warren has spent the last few days at the center of an odd political maelstrom over her claim to have been fired from her public-school teaching job in 1971 when she was visibly pregnant with her first child. Some conservatives have raised doubts about her depiction of events. 

Whatever your views on the validity of her claim, Warren’s story of being “showed the door” by her principal has resonated with people, especially women who remember the era and shared similar experiences. One of them was my mom, who was fired from her public-school teaching job in 1971, when she was pregnant with me.

Like Warren, my mom was a young, untenured public-school teacher on a one-year contract. Once visibly pregnant, she was called in by her school’s superintendent and forced out of her job. 

But there was one big difference between my mother’s case and Warren’s: my mom had union backing—and sued the school district to keep her job.

One thing her story illuminates that’s relevant context for judging Warren’s claims is that the practice of firing pregnant teachers was widespread in 1971—so much so that the National Education Association, the teacher’s union, was looking to challenge the constitutionality of the practice and chose my mother’s as a test case. They argued that firing a pregnant teacher—“forced maternity leave” was the day’s euphemism—violated her rights to due process and equal protection under the 14th Amendment.

The case made national news:

My Mom Was Fired From Her Teaching Job in 1971 For Being Pregnant

The practice of firing pregnant teachers had broad, pernicious societal effects. One that’s stuck with my mom all these years later was that in 1971 many were the wives of soldiers serving in Vietnam, who were abruptly deprived of their livelihood at the worst possible time.

So she and the NEA sued in federal district court—and lost.

Here’s a New York Daily News article showing my mom in, um, ’70s leather tunic and medallion on that unhappy day.

My Mom Was Fired From Her Teaching Job in 1971 For Being Pregnant

But she and her lawyers appealed the case and found a more receptive audience at the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. 

The alleged state interest in firing her and others in her condition included “concern for the [health and] safety of the teacher and her unborn child.” Yet as her lawyers pointed out, pregnant students were welcome to attend her high school. 

Another rationale for firing pregnant teachers was to avoid “distractions” caused by children “pointing, giggling, laughing and making snide remarks.” The judge called this claim “ludicrous”—my mother was a high school English teacher—and added, with withering flair, “whatever may have been the reaction in Queen Victoria's time, pregnancy is no longer a dirty word.”

Reading through the decision today, it strikes me that the (male) judge was pretty woke for 1971. He went on: “One realizes with a shock what so many women now proclaim: Old accepted rules and customs often discriminate against women in ways that have long been taken for granted or have gone unnoticed.”

In the end, the 2nd Circuit Court found that the school’s pregnancy policy was “discriminatory” and devoid of “legitimate state interests.” It reversed the lower court’s ruling, finding that my mother had “a valid constitutional claim.” The Supreme Court later agreed in a related case.

My Mom Was Fired From Her Teaching Job in 1971 For Being Pregnant

By this time I had arrived on the scene—or, as the Daily News put it, “the stork arrived” and delivered “a red-haired, 7-pound, 11-ounce boy named Joshua.”

Here’s the kicker.

Forced out of her job prematurely, my mom sued for lost pay—and won. Here, in all its ’70s splendor, is the court photo of the groovy young couple and their gigantically fat baby (me) holding a check for $3,028 that the school district had to cut to my mom. 

My Mom Was Fired From Her Teaching Job in 1971 For Being Pregnant

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jillian Goodman at jgoodman74@bloomberg.net

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