Fired ‘Sexual Addict’ Loses His Bid to Get Teaching Job Back

A former college teacher who said he was discriminated against because of his “sexual addiction” lost his bid to get his job back when the Supreme Court rejected his final appeal Monday.

Donald B. Winston, a veteran English instructor at Central Maine Technical College, asked an 18-year-old female student to meet privately with him in 1989. Rather than discuss her schoolwork, however, he talked about sex and kissed her.

When she complained, school officials learned of four previous incidents. While the teacher said that his encounters with students were “consensual,” he admitted he was “sexually obsessive” and needed counseling. Instead, he was fired.

Winston then sued the college, contending that he suffered from the “mental handicap of sexual addiction.” His dismissal violated the federal law that bars discriminating against “individuals with disabilities,” he maintained. A psychiatrist testified that the teacher indeed suffered from an “impulse control disorder.”

But a trial judge and the Maine Supreme Court ruled that sexual addiction is not among the disabilities covered by federal law.

In his appeal, he had asked the high court to reopen the case (Winston vs. Maine Technical College System, 93-1114).

The state’s lawyers scoffed at the claim, noting that no court had recognized his “addiction” as a legal disability. To do so “would run a serious risk of undercutting society’s efforts to combat sexual harassment,” they said.