Minnesota Witch Fired by School District

January 19, 2006 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - A Princeton, Minnesota school bus driver claims she was fired from her job for being a witch.

No, she wasn’t mean to the children; being a witch is her religious belief. According to a KSTP.com news report, Julie Carpenter said she never had a problem with her job before she mentioned last week that she was a witch.

Carpenter, who has been a school bus driver for five years, said her employer said she was a great driver. She said she never discussed being a witch with any of the children on her bus, according to the news report.

The Princeton school district requested that she have no contact with students, and said she was not a good role model. Claiming its request is legal, the district said, “We have the right, that if we feel if somebody is not what we want them to be with children, or any other reason, all we have to do is let them know.”

Jonathon Sharkey, Carpenter’s husband and a self-proclaimed ‘vampire’ who is campaigning for governor, said the couple plans to sue the school district. “I think this was a witch hunt, a lynching,” Sharkey said. “They are appalled at what I am, so they took it out on my wife.”

Civil rights attorney Larry Leventhal says that if the district has “a good faith belief that being a witch involves a complex of actions that puts the children in jeopardy,” it may have the legal right to dismiss Carpenter.

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