No More Options for Educator in DePauw Religious Discrimination Case
by Jim Brown
April 20, 2005
(AgapePress) - A Christian educator has run out of legal options in her religious discrimination case against United Methodist-affiliated DePauw University.
Earlier this month, the Indiana Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal filed by Janis Price, education program coordinator at DePauw, who claims the university violated her First Amendment rights and created a hostile work environment. The university had cut her pay, stripped her of all her titles, suspended her teaching duties, and placed her on probation for making Christian magazines available in her classroom. (See article from November 2002)
Price believes she is the victim of a miscarriage of justice. "In every instance where there has been a judge or a lawyer involved, other than my own lawyer, I have felt mistreated," the educator says, "and I have felt that they were not interested in the truth -- but rather they were interested in covering up what DePauw had done."
The DePauw instructor maintains that the punishment doled out to her by the school's vice president for academic affairs, Neil Abrams, was because of her Christian beliefs. She clearly recalls Abrams telling her that he "could not tolerate the intolerable."
"And when I asked him specifically what he meant by that," she explains, "it was that he could not tolerate my Christian faith in general and specifically, he could not tolerate my position on homosexuality -- which, of course, is the biblical position that homosexuality is a sin."
In January, a three-judge panel of the Indiana Court of Appeals overturned a jury verdict in favor of Price. One of the panel members, Judge Terry Crone, is a DePauw alumnus -- a fact price feels should have forced the judge to recuse himself from the case. Price says although she has lost her faith in the court system throughout her ordeal, she has not lost her faith in Jesus Christ.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
