School guilty of discrimination

(ANSA) - Trento, June 23 - 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.