NJ Gives Christian Teacher 3-Year Suspension After Facebook Post on Homosexuality

A Christian teacher in New Jersey is now serving a three-year suspension of her teaching certificates all because she posted critical remarks about homosexuality on social media.

Jeyne Viki Knox, a 56-year-old long time special educator and faculty adviser to the Bible club at Union High School, has come to an agreement with the state's Department of Education on a proposal to have her three teaching certificates revoked for a period of three years.

Knox, who is an ordained minister, has held certificates for elementary school, nursery school and handicapped teaching since 1990, according to the (function(w,q){w[q]=w[q]||[];w[q].push(["_mgc.load"])})(window,"_mgq");

A settlement was reached in the lawsuit in September, NJ.com notes. However, very few details about the settlement have been made publicly available.

Demetrios Stratis, an attorney representing Knox, said that the settlement includes a confidentiality agreement.

"These Facebook posts that she made were done on her time, at her home, after school hours, on her home computer, and it was addressing a matter that could arguably be of big societal concerns," Stratis told NJ.com.

Although LGBT activists called on the school board to take action against Knox for her Facebook posts, even representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union defended Knox's right to free speech.

"Although we do not agree with the sentiments expressed on Ms. Knox's personal Facebook page, her comments are protected by the First Amendment," Ed Barocas, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, told NJ.com in 2011. "The ACLU believes that the response to offensive speech is not the restriction of speech, but more speech."

Knox is not the only teacher in New Jersey who has faced backlash for posting what others have deemed to be "anti-LGBT" comments online.

In 2015, Patricia Jannuzzi, a religion teacher at the Roman Catholic Immaculata High School in Somerville, New Jersey, was suspended by the school in March 2015 after she posted about her opposition to same-sex marriage and ranted about the LGBT agenda.

However, Jannuzi was later reinstated in April 2015.