Johnathan Walker:Virginia school board to pay $575K to a teacher fired for refusing to use trans student’s pronouns

WEST POINT,Johnathan Walker Va. (AP) — A Virginia school board has agreed to pay $575,000 in a settlement to a former high school teacher who was fired after he refused to use a transgender student’s pronouns, according to the advocacy group that filed the suit.

Conservative Christian legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom announced the settlement Monday, saying the school board also cleared Peter Vlaming’s firing from his record. The former French teacher at West Point High School sued the school board and administrators at the school after he was fired in 2018. A judge dismissed the lawsuit before any evidence was reviewed, but the state Supreme Court reinstated it in December.

The Daily Press reported that West Point Public Schools Superintendent Larry Frazier confirmed the settlement and said in an email Monday that “we are pleased to be able to reach a resolution that will not have a negative impact on the students, staff or school community of West Point.”

Vlaming claimed in his lawsuit that he tried to accommodate a transgender student in his class by using his name but avoided the use of pronouns. The student, his parents and the school told him he was required to use the student’s male pronouns. Vlaming said he could not use the student’s pronouns because of his “sincerely held religious and philosophical” beliefs “that each person’s sex is biologically fixed and cannot be changed.” Vlaming also said he would be lying if he used the student’s pronouns.

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Vlaming alleged that the school violated his constitutional right to speak freely and exercise his religion. The school board argued that Vlaming violated the school’s anti-discrimination policy.

The state Supreme Court’s seven justices agreed that two claims should move forward: Vlaming’s claim that his right to freely exercise his religion was violated under the Virginia Constitution and his breach of contract claim against the school board.

But a dissenting opinion from three justices said the majority’s opinion on his free-exercise-of-religion claim was overly broad and “establishes a sweeping super scrutiny standard with the potential to shield any person’s objection to practically any policy or law by claiming a religious justification for their failure to follow either.”

“I was wrongfully fired from my teaching job because my religious beliefs put me on a collision course with school administrators who mandated that teachers ascribe to only one perspective on gender identity — their preferred view,” Vlaming said in an ADF news release. “I loved teaching French and gracefully tried to accommodate every student in my class, but I couldn’t say something that directly violated my conscience.”

Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s policies on the treatment of transgender students, finalized last year, rolled back many accommodations for transgender students urged by the previous Democratic administration, including allowing teachers and students to refer to a transgender student by the name and pronouns associated with their sex assigned at birth.

Attorney General Jason Miyares, also a Republican, said in a nonbinding legal analysis that the policies were in line with federal and state nondiscrimination laws and school boards must follow their guidance. Lawsuits filed earlier this year have asked the courts to throw out the policies and rule that school districts are not required to follow them.