To your thinking, think how to win in court. That’s where the focus should be, IMO. She was wrong and that’s where the focus should be and way way way less costly.
They don’t have to justify why it’s a church teaching! It is. Simply as that.
She signed to obey their rules, she told them what she was doing, then (supposedly) found out it was against their teaching and she was fired. What would she expect they do? Renege on the agreement they both signed? Every company has rules and are obligated to do what needs to be done when one goes against them lest their company run amok.
Don’t think ‘religious’ here nor trying the ‘we have higher standards routine - that’s a sure looser, IMO. Think employee/employer. Case closed. With time and money left to fight fights than a disgruntled employee because she feels wronged. WOW!! A snoozer of a case for any half way decent lawyer. Going the IVF route (going to prove what? IVF is bad/against God? In court! LOL! This isn’t about them preventing her from going for the treatments and why. This isn’t what this case is about and I hope they don’t make it that. If the other side brings it up, a sharp attorney will bring it right back down to where it belongs - the lowest level. Rules were disobeyed and not about she’s violated our teachings - but rules we have in place. Again, employee/employer.
So going the IVF route - you need witnesses as surely than anything, you will have an opposing view for everyone they bring forth. In the end, it’s up to who are you going to believe ‘witness x’ or witness y’. This isn’t about IVF nor should be it’s about her going against the rules she signed to obey. If she works there, it’s up to her to know the rules, not to make sure she knows them. She was hired as a professional and a professional would want to know what the do/do not are in a company.
If she failed in teaching her class the required courses necessary, which has nothing to do with church teachings, they could fire her! So keep it as employee/employer. It’s just rules they have in place that she went against.
Her attorney, I’m sure is just hoping they go the IVF route - a big case, more the CC may have to shell over - otherwise she wouldn’t even have brought the case. She gets a D-.
Another future employee wouldn’t touch her, taking a former employer to court because she was supposedly didn’t know the rules of the company after 8 years working there and when she disobeyed them was fired - her solution to that problem was take them to court, for them obeying their rules while she didn’t? Lady, move over, there are 100 others who know you disobey, they stand the chance of getting fired and not to retaliate.
She may get a job in a place that has no ethics to stand by their own rules, then when she’s loaded down with work or suffers mistreatment from others that would be tolerated by management - maybe she will learn to appreciate a company with ethics. She’s already a little old to learn that lesson, greed has a way of blinding some.
In legal cases, religion does have the high ground, and that goes back to magna carta. The common law owes much to the civil law, but that came to English law through familiarity with canon law. Equity, of course, began as the chancellory courts, and when they were finally blended, the “ecclesiastical” element remained. Judges could not get by with as much as they do if they did not retain some royal dignity, as being originally deputies of the Crown, the king’s office itself having its own divine sanction. Positivism of course dominates the legal profession, but even they have to nod occasionally to the older forms, which are based not on contract but covenant.