A former teacher at St. Theresa School in Kenilworth will be allowed to continue with her lawsuit against the Catholic school, which terminated her after she became pregnant while unmarried, an appeals court decided Tuesday.

Victoria Crisitello's suit had previously been dismissed, in 2016 in Superior Court in Union County.

She'd been working at the school for three years when she disclosed to Principal Theresa Lee that she was pregnant in January 2014. Crisitello shared the information during a meeting in which Lee was asking Crisitello to take on additional work responsibilities, the appeals court decision says.

"On January 29, 2014, after consulting with other clerical and school personnel, Lee decided to fire plaintiff for engaging in premarital sex," the decision says.

In another meeting, Lee made clear that Crisitello's job performance was not the reasoning for the firing -- it was because she was pregnant and unmarried, the document said. She had "violated the Church's ethical standards," the school alleges.

Crisitello's lawyer, Thomas McKinney, told NJ Advance Media on Tuesday that his client was engaged to be married at the time of her firing.

The school also argues that when Crisitello began working at St. Theresa in 2011, she signed a document agreeing to conduct herself in manners aligning with the Catholic Church.

The document prohibited:

"Immoral conduct, participation in abortion, committing homicide or euthanasia, possession or distribution of pornographic material, adultery, flagrant promiscuity or illicit co-habitation, abuse of alcohol, drugs, or gambling, theft, fraud, or any other form of misappropriation or misuse of Church funds or property and sexual exploitation or abuse."

But the document did not specifically ban pregnancy out of wedlock, Crisitello argues.

In October of 2014, Crisitello filed her suit against the school, claiming her firing was "a mere pretext for discrimination on the basis of (her) pregnancy" and her marital status.

The state's Law Against Discrimination (LAD) prohibits discrimination in the workplace but provides a "broad exemption for religious institutions."

But most recently, the appellate court ruled that someone terminated from a religious institution is entitled to offer evidence whether "unequal treatment" had occurred.

Crisitello argues she was "singled out" for the application of the ethical code, and cited a 1999 case that says a religious institution can violate LAD because if "'women can become pregnant (and) men cannot,' it punishes only women for sexual relations because those relations are revealed through pregnancy."

"(W)omen (cannot) be subject to termination for something that men would not be, (as) that is sex discrimination, regardless of the justification put forth for the disparity," the case states.

Crisitello is seeking lost wages, emotional distress and punitive damages for her loss of employment.

McKinney said he believes the appeals court did right by his client.

"This is a case where people aren't being treated equally or fairly," he said. "I saw it similarly to the Scarlet Letter -- you think of the Hester Prynne character, and she was punished in society because she showed her sins, and you see the same things here."

St. Theresa's is the school where parents sued last year to get their daughter on the boy's basketball team because there was no girl's team.

A court ruled in favor of the family, but the school later expelled her and her sister, saying the family had "disrupted the school community." That decision was upheld last year in superior court. That incident also led to judicial charges against the mom, a judge in Union County

Christopher H. Westrick, who is representing the school in the Crisitello matter, was not available for comment Tuesday.

Paige Gross may be reached at pgross@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @By_paigegross.