Flint Dollar was fired last May for planning to marry his longtime partner. (Photo by A1A Photography)

Fired gay Macon band director reaches settlement with school

Flint Dollar, the openly gay former band director who was fired from a Catholic prep school in Macon last May because he planned on marrying his partner, has reached a settlement with the school.

The terms of the settlement, first reported Tuesday by the Macon Telegraph, are confidential and Dollar's attorney Charles Cox filed a motion to dismiss the federal lawsuit he and Dollar filed against the school last month

“Mr. Flint Dollar and Mount de Sales Academy have reached a confidential settlement agreement to resolve this lawsuit, to the mutual satisfaction of both parties," Cox told Georgia Voice on Tuesday evening. "The parties have no further comment on this matter.”

Mount de Sales Academy fired Dollar last year and cited his impending marriage at the time as the reason why, even though it was no secret that Dollar was gay and had had a longtime boyfriend. Dollar even says he notified school administrators of his sexual orientation during his job interviews in 2010.

The school’s handbook had a non-discrimination policy that included sexual orientation, but the contract he signed included a morality clause that the school may have used as grounds for Dollar’s dismissal.

Three members of the Mount de Sales Academy board of trustees resigned in the wake of the incident, and students and teachers rallied together to get the school to reinstate him but the school refused.

Dollar filed a sex discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) last June. Cox cited Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as precedent. The EEOC determined in March of this year that reasonable cause existed to believe that Mount de Sales Academy discriminated against Dollar and he filed suit.

Dollar, who married his partner last July, has since taken a job as organist and music director at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Lewiston, a small town in upstate New York a few miles north of Niagara Falls.