In October, Teri James says her supervisor at San Diego Christian College called her to her office and got straight to the point: Was James pregnant?

James, 29, of El Cajon, Calif., was indeed pregnant – and she was also unmarried, a violation of school rules, according to the lawsuit she filed in San Diego County superior court. She says she was fired because, as the termination letter included in the suit stated: “Teri engaged in activity outside the scope of the Handbook and Community Covenant that does not build up the college’s mission.”

Speaking by phone with her lawyer, Gloria Allred, James said she felt humiliated. 

"I had to leave right after the meeting. I had to go into the office with all of my co-workers and say I'm leaving," James said. "I never came back so I don't know what my co-workers thought, but for me, it was humiliating. I felt like I was in trouble." 

Also insulting, James said, was that after firing her, the school offered a job to her then-fiancé – they are now married – even though it was known that he, too, engaged in premarital sex. He did not accept the job, she said. 

In filing the suit, James joins a group of women who in recent years have sued the religious schools that fired them for getting pregnant out of wedlock. In each case, the school pointed to moral codes, “community covenants” and handbooks that employees must sign, typically every year, promising to abide by school rules.

San Diego Christian College asks that its employees sign its “community covenant,” a two-page contract that asks its community, which includes employees and about 500 students on-site, to abstain from drugs, alcohol and tobacco and “abusive anger, malice, jealousy, lust, sexually immoral behavior including premarital sex, adultery, pornography and homosexuality, evil desires and prejudice based on race, sex or socioeconomic status.”

"We all had to sign it," James said. "I needed a job in this economy and so I never thought that anything would happen -- I just needed a job." 

Added Allred: "It does not say that you will be fired if you do not comply." 

San Diego Christian College did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The college has not responded to the suit. 

James, who had worked at the college as a financial aid specialist for two years, signed the letter in August, weeks before she became pregnant. She is currently six-and-a-half months pregnant with a boy, due in June. 

In two recent cases out of Ohio, two moms-to-be say they were fired by Catholic schools after they told the principals at their schools they were pregnant.   

In Kettering, Ohio, Ascension Catholic School first-grade teacher Kathleen Quinlan became pregnant with twin girls in the fall of 2011. Four days after Christmas that year, she was told she would lose her job, according to a lawsuit she filed in December in U.S. District Court in Southern Ohio.

The lawsuit notes that Quinlan was not an ordained minister and that she did not lead children in prayer. The point may seem random, but it is a reference to a unanimous Supreme Court decision handed down in 2011, Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC. The high court dismissed a lawsuit by a Christian schoolteacher who alleged she was fired for a disability, saying that churches and their schools may choose who will minister to their faithful.  

Court records include Ascension School’s letter to Quinlan, which stated that she was fired because she did not comply with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. But her suit says that her gender played a large role in her dismissal because it does not become obvious when men have premarital sex.

The Archdiocese of Cincinnati filed a response to the suit this week, admitting that she had told church leaders she was pregnant and that she was fired for a breach of contract. 

In nearby Cincinnati, Ohio, Christa Dias, who oversaw computer systems at Holy Family and St. Lawrence schools, became pregnant by artificial insemination. According to the 2011 suit she filed in U.S. District Court, she says she was fired because church officials said artificial insemination is a violation of Church doctrine. 

The court handed down their decision last month, which did not come out in Dias' favor because she was living with a long-term female partner, a violation of the very contract she was saying the church had breached. But the court determined that she could not be considered a minister because she was not Catholic and was not responsible for religious instruction. The court said it wasn't enough to call her a role model simply because she was affiliated with a religious school.   

So can a school fire an unmarried, pregnant woman? 

Simply put, yes, if she violated a school contract. But it's not clear cut, as case law has not settled these claims, said spokeswoman Christine Nazer of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission via email. 

An organization can require employees not to engage in premarital sex but cannot fire her because she becomes pregnant, Nazer explained. 

Back in San Diego County, James says she hopes that the lawsuit will change the lives of women employed by Christian organizations. 

"I want to pave the way, say, Christian organizations, you can't necessarily fall back on this," she said. "You can't hurt people like this. If you say that you stand for love and mercy and grace -- stand for those who are weak." 

Forget about seeing red. Managers at a Florida law firm reportedly saw orange and fired everyone wearing the color.

A group of 14 workers were handed pink slips because they all wore orange shirts to work last Friday, according to a story in the Sun Sentinel this weekend. The law firm isn’t commenting on the mass firing, but some employees are claiming they were fired for the innocent act of just wanting to match their outfits.

This workplace color clash opens the question of whether workers have any legal rights when they're canned or demoted for their fashion choices. 

Former employees of Elizabeth R. Wellborn law firm in Deerfield Beach, FL, said they chose to wear orange en masse last week because they were planning to go to happy hour together and wanted to distinguish themselves as a group for the night’s festivities.

A person answering the phone at the law firm who would not give her name said "we don't have any comment right now."

But a group of fired workers, who could not be immediately reached by TODAY on Monday, told their story to the Sun Sentinel last week. “We decided to wear orange,” said Janice Doble, a terminated employee and a lover of all things orange.

On Friday, she said, management at the law firm told her and the other workers that their fashion choice was considered threatening and they were all being fired as a result. “I think it was an excuse to fire all these people,” she maintained.

Excuse or not, there are few laws protecting employees when it comes to their fashion choices if workers don’t have an employment contract or are part of a union.

“Unless they are in a state with a specific law on point, such a termination would be lawful,” said Hanan Kolko, an employment attorney.

Florida, among other states, is an at-will work state and that means employers can pretty much fire you for whatever reason, except when it comes to discriminating against a particular group.

If you have to wear a certain outfit for religious reasons that right is protected under labor laws, but even then, you may be restricted from wearing certain garments if they impede the work you do or pose a safety issue.

Some employees at the law firm said they were told management saw their matching orange shirts as some sort of sign of protest. The workers denied it was a protest, but ironically, if they had worn the shirts as an act of solidarity to protest a workplace issue they may also have been protected under collective bargaining laws that protect concerted efforts among employees to better things such as wages or working conditions.

But just wearing a certain color shirt, or any other garment, because you feel like it, isn’t protected.

Most employers are pretty open-minded when it comes to what their employees can wear.

About 55 percent of employers offer casual dress at least once a week, and 36 percent allow casual dress everyday, according to a study by the Society of Human Resource Management.

So that means orange shirts, or any color, probably goes in most U.S. workplaces even if they’re supposedly a no no at Elizabeth R. Wellborn’s law firm.

Unfortunately for Wellborn, totally banning orange may be tough this year. The hot color at New York Fashion Week last month was, you guessed it, orange. 

This story has been corrected from an earlier version. 

Employees have religious rights in the workplace, but wearing your religion on your sleeve at work can be hazardous to your career.

The question of how much religion in the workplace is too much is playing out in a California court this week with a closely watched case involving a former NASA employee.

David Coppedge, a former computer specialist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is claiming he lost his managerial role and then his job because he believes in a higher power. His employer says he was harassing employees but was ultimately let go as part of a round of mass layoffs.

Coppedge admitted in a court filing that he was engaging his co-workers in religious conversation, most notably handing out DVDs on intelligent design, and that he was warned by a supervisor to cut it out because it amounted to “pushing religion,” and that the dialogue was “unwelcome” and “disruptive.”

Despite this, Coppedge is suing his former employer for religious discrimination, harassment and wrongful termination.

This type of religious conflict at work is something we’re seeing more of today, compared to even a few decades ago when the workplace was more homogenous, said Jamie Prenkert, an attorney and associate professor of business law at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business.

There is more diversity in offices and factories, and the labor laws have been bolstered to protect the religious rights of employees, covered under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Indeed, cases of religious discrimination filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have been on the rise since 1997, reaching 4,151 charges last year.

Employers are required to provide “reasonable accommodation for the religious practices and beliefs of employees” under the law. When it's not considered an undue hardship for employers by the courts, workers have won battles including everything from not working on certain religious holidays to prayer time to wearing religious garb. 

Increasingly, however, workers are pushing the envelope on what they want to do in the name of their religion, Prenkert said, because many individuals are politically and socially emboldened today to “carry their religion into all aspects of their life.”

That desire, however, can create problems at work. “When you bring that together in the workplace with people of varying backgrounds and beliefs that have to work together, it often results in allegations of intolerance that fly both ways,” he said.

It’s tempting to say we should leave religion at the door, Prenkert added, “but that does ignore some people’s deeply held beliefs.”

Clearly, an employer can’t discriminate against an employee based on religion, but that doesn’t mean your boss has to put up with all behaviors associated with your beliefs, especially if they include harassment, said Joanna Friedman an employment attorney with Tully Rinckey in Washington.

When it comes to religion in the workplace, she said, “it’s fine for employees and even supervisors to talk about religious beliefs as long as it's not done in a manner that’s intimidating or interferes with employment duties or creates a situation where you’re abusing your authority,” she stressed.

It’s unclear if Coppedge stepped over the line.

In his suit, he claims he did not “coerce” or “compel” anyone and that he was singled out because of: “his religious convictions generally, and specifically for his belief in God as the creator of the universe, his support for California’s Proposition 8, which was adopted by voters in November 2008 (striking down the rights of same-sex couples to marry), and his request that JPL’s annual "holiday party" be renamed the "Christmas party," as it had been called in the past.”

But in the suit, he also admits that employees complained to managers about him harassing them by talking about his religious convictions and giving them religious DVDs as gifts.

A spokeswoman for NASA Veronica McGregor said, “Mr. Coppedge was laid off during downsizing. There had been issues, not with the content of Coppedge’s speech but the way he interacted with his co-workers. Of course, that was a separate issue from the layoffs that occurred later.” 

While it’s impossible to say who will prevail in the case, Friedman said handing out religious DVDs could be troublesome from a legal perspective.

“The law gives broad protections to employees and managers when it comes to religious beliefs,” she said, “but once an employee’s conduct in the workplace creates problems because of their beliefs, that’s problematic.”