The Court of Rovereto on Thursday
found the Sacred Heart Institute of Trento guilty of
discrimination based on sexual orientation, and ordered the
school to pay a lesbian former teacher 25,000 euros in damages,
ANSA sources said.
The teacher was asked by the school to "solve the problem"
of living with a woman in a romantic relationship, and when she
refused, she lost her job, said the teacher's attorney Alexander
Schuster.
"This is the first ruling that finds an ideologically
oriented enterprise guilty of discrimination since
anti-discrimination laws went into effect in 2003," Schuster
said.
The judge also accepted requests from the CGIL Trentino
labour union and the Certi Diritti (Certain Rights) radical
association to affirm "the character of collective
discrimination of various statements made by the Institute with
which it claimed the right to not hire homosexual people,
considered unsuitable for having contact with minors".
The associations who sued the school were each awarded
1,500 euros in damages.
Schuster said this ruling is the first-ever case in Italy
of a sentence for individual discrimination based on sexual
orientation, and the second-ever case for collective
discrimination based on sexual orientation.
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