Maria worked as an assistant (non-teaching personnel) to the director for community outreach at a Catholic educational school. She got pregnant by her boyfriend. Upon learning this, the head of the school advised her to resign. The head said that getting pregnant outside of marriage constitutes disgraceful or immoral conduct and conduct unbecoming of an employee of a Catholic school. Maria disagreed, maintaining that getting pregnant outside of marriage is not serious misconduct.

The school terminated her employment. Maria filed an illegal dismissal case against the school. The Labor Arbiter (LA) sided with the school. On appeal, the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) affirmed the decision. Upon elevation, the Court of Appeals (CA) affirmed the NLRC. Undaunted, Maria appealed to the Supreme Court. Were the LA, NLRC, and CA correct? Was Maria legally dismissed from service on the ground of serious misconduct?

No. The determination of whether a conduct is disgraceful or immoral involves a two-step process: first, a consideration of the totality of the circumstances surrounding the conduct; and second, an assessment of the said circumstances vis-à-vis the prevailing norms of conduct, i.e., what the society generally considers moral and respectable. When the law speaks of immoral or, necessarily, disgraceful conduct, it pertains to public and secular morality; it refers to those conducts which are proscribed because they are detrimental to conditions upon which depend the existence and progress of human society. Here, nothing shows a violation of that standard. Pre-marital sexual relations between two consenting adults who have no impediment to marry each other, and, consequently, conceiving a child out of wedlock, gauged from a purely public and secular view of morality, does not amount to a disgraceful or immoral conduct. Indeed, even prior to her dismissal, the Maria married her boyfriend, the father of her child.

• Leus v. St. Scholatstica’s College Westgrove. G.R. No. 187226, January 28, 2015.