A Long Island middle school teacher in is threatening to sue her former employer for gender discrimination after she claimed she was fired last week for an old topless photo.
The 25-year-old former math teacher at Bellport Middle School in New York City, Lauren Miranda, sent a topless selfie in 2016 to her then-boyfriend, also an employee at the school. A student somehow obtained the photo in January, Miranda’s attorney John Ray said in a press conference, according to WPIX.
“I loved my job, I never woke up in the morning and didn’t want to go. I loved my students, my faculty. I really thought this is where I was going to spend the next thirty years of my life,” Miranda said.
Miranda was placed on administrative leave, even though she said she had no idea how the student obtained the photograph, and was later fired.
Miranda plans to file a $3 million lawsuit alleging gender discrimination unless she is reinstated.
“My career has been ruined, my reputation has been tarnished, I have been stigmatized,” Miranda said. “Everything I have worked so hard for since I was 18 years old has been stolen from me because of one innocuous selfie.”
Ray argued there is a double standard that women face.
“Anytime a man has ever exposed his chest, no one has ever commented or had any problem with it whatsoever. But when a woman displays her chest, as happened here, she gets fired from her job,” Ray said.
According to court documents, the Long Island suburban school district said Miranda was not a good role model because of the photo.
