Pushed out or quit? Elizabeth Warren defends telling two versions of story about losing job over pregnancy
Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren is standing by a claim that she lost a teaching job in 1971 when she was 22 and six months pregnant, while resurfaced documents allege otherwise.
Warren was questioned about her story in an interview with CBS News after a video from 2007 resurfaced and shows her telling the same story without adding that she was “shown the door” for being pregnant.
In the 2007 interview, Warren said she decided that working was not going to “work out” for her and had decided to have the baby and “stayed home for a couple of years.”
Yet on the campaign trail, the Massachusetts senator and 2020 frontrunner has claimed multiple times that she was not given the job promised to her at Riverdale Elementary School in New Jersey, where she had already worked for one year, because she was pregnant.
“By the end of the first year, I was visibly pregnant, and the principal did what principals did in those days. Wish me luck and hire someone else for the job,” Warren said at a campaign event last week.
But in the CBS interview this week, Warren doubled down.
“All I know is I was 22 years old, I was 6 months pregnant, and the job that I had been promised for the next year was going to someone else. The principal said they were going to hire someone else for my job,” she said.
“When someone calls you in and says the job that you’ve been hired for the next year is no longer yours, ‘We’re giving it to someone else,’ I think that’s being shown the door,” she added.
She told CBS that the different phrasing was a result of her deciding to “open up” more about events from her past since becoming a public figure when she was elected to the US Senate in 2012.
But documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show that Warren indeed resigned from the job. Meeting minutes show that Warren’s contract was renewed for a second year in April 1971 and that the Riverdale Board of Education accepted her resignation “with regret” in June that year.
The CBS report also noted that stories from the local Paterson News reported that Warren had left her role “to raise a family.”
Like this story? Share it with a friend!
Comments are closed.