Home Politics Warren Stand By Her Firing Claim, Even After Documents Show She Resigned

Warren Stand By Her Firing Claim, Even After Documents Show She Resigned

On the campaign trail, Elizabeth Warren often tells the story of how she was fired from her first teaching job in 1971 because she was pregnant, a pivotal moment that ultimately put her on a path to Harvard, the United States Senate, and quite possibly the presidency. But recently, several media outlets have questioned the veracity of these claims.

Warren doubled down on her claim that she was fired from a teaching job for being pregnant Monday.

The Massachusetts senator said Monday in an exclusive interview with CBS News that she stands by her previous statements that she was pushed out for being pregnant in 1971.

“All I know is I was 22 years old, I was 6 months pregnant, and the job that I had been promised for the next year was going to someone else. The principal said they were going to hire someone else for my job,” she said. 

By the end of the first year I was visibly pregnant, and the principal did what principals did in those days: wished me luck, showed me the door, and hired someone else for the job,” she said at a town hall in Oakland in June. 

The “showed me the door” anecdote came up often on the campaign trail until recently. And now some outlets have found a 2007 interview Warren gave in which she presents the story in a different light. 

In an interview that year at the University of California, Berkeley, Warren gave the first known public account of her time at Riverdale. 

“I worked in a public school system with the children with disabilities. I did that for a year, and then that summer I didn’t have the education courses, so I was on an ’emergency certificate,’ it was called,” Warren said in 2007. “I went back to graduate school and took a couple of courses in education and said, ‘I don’t think this is going to work out for me.’ I was pregnant with my first baby, so I had a baby and stayed home for a couple of years.”

Documents also show that Warren resigned from her job. The Riverdale Board of Education in New Jersey extended Warren’s teaching contract for a second year in April 1971, according to meeting minutes the Washington Free Beacon obtained. The board accepted Warren’s resignation “with regret” in June 1971, records indicate.

“After becoming a public figure I opened up more about different pieces in my life and this was one of them. I wrote about it in my book when I became a U.S. Senator,” Warren said in a statement from her campaign to CBS.

The 2020 presidential candidate also has faced backlash for her claim to Native American heritage. A genetic test showed that Warren had between 1/64th and 1/1,024th Native American ancestry.