A teacher has settled a discrimination lawsuit against a private school in Anne Arundel County that federal authorities said had fired him because he has the virus that causes AIDS.
In the consent decree approved Wednesday by U.S. District Judge William D. Quarles Jr. in Baltimore, Chauncey Stevenson is to receive $79,750, but the Chesapeake Academy in Arnold did not admit wrongdoing. Among the actions it must take are steps to teach its supervisors about the Americans with Disabilities Act. The law requires employers to accommodate workers' disabilities.
"People that are living with HIV and AIDS should not be discriminated against because of their disability, and they should be treated with sensitivity," Stevenson said. He said he lost his job after telling the head of the school in 2006 that he had HIV and missing half the academic year because of illness.
"I am very happy with the settlement," he said, adding that a diagnosis of HIV or AIDS should not put people in fear for their jobs.
Jay Scheurle, head of the school, said in a statement issued Friday that ending the lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was preferable to costly litigation and that other terms of the agreement would not require changes to school policies. He said the settlement amount would be covered by insurance.
The two sides, however, continued to disagree.
Scheurle said in the statement that the school did not violate Stevenson's rights, but showed "compassion and concern. We regret that Mr. Stevenson apparently does not share our view."
"I am deeply sorry that he felt aggrieved by the school's actions, but I took the steps that I believed were in the best interests of the students, who needed to know that they were going to have a teacher for the coming year," Dave Michelman, who was head of the school in 2006, said in the statement.
The EEOC sued the school last year on Stevenson's behalf after efforts at a settlement failed.
"As long as employers continue to make employment decisions based on uninformed prejudices and irrational fears, we will continue to bring lawsuits like this," Debra Lawrence, acting regional attorney for the EEOC, said in a statement.
Stevenson, 39, had taught second grade and music at Chesapeake Academy, an independent private school for preschool through fifth grade, since 2003. He became ill in late 2005, he said.
When Stevenson planned to take the rest of the academic year off, he told Michelman about his diagnosis.
The response he got, he said, was that the news would not sit well within the school community.
"I assumed I would be welcome to return in September 2006," he said. "I got a letter, in May [2006], telling me my contract would not be renewed."
He worked as a fifth-grade teacher in a Baltimore public school during the 2006-2007 school year, and has since returned to his hometown in North Carolina, where he teaches music privately through a store.
