ICC Note: New Jersey substitute teacher Walt Tutka was fired in 2013 after giving a Bible to a curious student, who privately asked him where he could find a specific passage. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled in mid-December that the Phillipsburg School District has committed an act of discrimination by firing Tutka. The Liberty Institute, who represented Tutka, is thrilled with the EEOC’s decision and believe that this case highlights the school district’s misplaced “natural allergic reaction to religion.”
01/08/2015 United States (The Christian Post) – A New Jersey school district broke the law when it fired a substitute teacher after he gave a curious middle school student a Bible for academic purposes, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled in a mid-December decision released to the public this week.
The federal agency ruled it was an act of discrimination for Phillipsburg School District to fire substitute teacher Walt Tutka in 2013 after he gave a Bible to an interested student who had approached him privately and asked to be shown where in the Bible the saying “the first will be last and the last will be first” is written.
Tutka, who spoke with Fox News, said that the incident started during in October of 2012 when he held the door open for the line of students exiting his classroom on their way to lunch. As the last student walked out the door, Tutka told the student, “just remember, the first will be last and the last will be first.”
In the ensuing weeks, Tutka said he was approached by the same student several times, as the student expressed that he had never heard the saying before and wanted to know where it came from. Tutka told the student that the saying come from the Bible.
On another occasion, the student approached Tutka and asked where in the Bible the saying is located. Tutka did not know, off the top of his head, where that saying was located in the Bible. He told the student that he would look it up for him and let him know. Tutka said that he found the saying in passages in Matthew, Mark and Luke and then told the kid that it was located in those chapters.
