Jury Awards Nearly $2 Million to Teacher Fired by Diocese Over Fertility Treatments

A federal court jury in Indiana Dec. 19 returned a nearly $2 million sex discrimination verdict against a Roman Catholic diocese that fired a female parochial school teacher for undergoing in vitro fertilization treatments (Herx v. Diocese of Fort Wayne-S. Bend, Inc., N.D. Ind., 12-122, verdict 12/19/14).

Following a four-day trial, jurors in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana found Emily Herx proved the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend violated Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by firing the middle school language arts teacher based on her sex after it learned ...