A California childcare teacher sued her former workplace after she was fired for refusing, due to her religious beliefs, to read books to children featuring same-sex couples.
Nelli Parisenkova worked for four years at Bright Horizons Children's Center in Studio City and cared for children as young as five years old. The teacher was aware of the presence of LGBT material at the institution but was not initially required to implement it.
Dismissed for her religious beliefs
Parisenkova filed a lawsuit in California Superior Court against Bright Horizons and some of its employees. She is accusing them of various charges including: unlawful retaliation, discrimination, religion-based harassment, wrongful termination, failure to accommodate and disparate treatment.
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Parisenkova's situation changed when Katy Callas, director of the center, learned of her refusal to read LGBT material on religious grounds. Subsequently, she refused her request for religious accommodation and created a hostile work environment that led to her dismissal. For Parisenkova, who is "a devout Christian," reading such books to children "would violate her religious beliefs and constitute promotion of intimate relationships and choices that are contrary to the teachings of her faith.":
Bright Horizons responded by categorically denying the request. Made no attempt whatsoever to determine whether a reasonable accommodation could be reached.
The institution's response was a "memo with false statements" that terminated her life insurance benefits, required her to complete new diversity training and encouraged her to resign her position. "Ms. Parisenkova could not return to work without an accommodation; so, Bright Horizons terminated her employment," the suit claims.
A discrimination scandal
Paul Jonna, special counsel for the Thomas More Society and one of Parisenovka's representatives, described her case as "an outrageous example of religious discrimination."
Bright Horizons leveled the full force of the company’s anti-religious and ironically ‘un-inclusive’ diversity policy against Ms. Parisenkova. They tried to get her to quit through harassment and intimidation. When she couldn’t return to work because they denied her accommodation request, they fired her. You can’t get much more discriminatory than that. It’s unethical and it’s blatantly illegal.
Jonna also claimed that when her client was called into Callas' office, the director "questioned her in an irate manner, told her that if she did not want to celebrate diversity this was not the place for her to work, gave her an administrative leave memo, escorted her outside with a security guard, and left her out in the 96-degree heat with no transportation," which caused her to suffer from heat stroke for the next two days.
