A Virginia school board will pay $575,000 in damages and attorney’s fees after firing a teacher for refusing to honor a student’s pronouns.
Peter Vlaming, a former French teacher from West Point High School, sued the local school board for $1 million after the board fired him for refusing to use a trans student’s male pronouns. The student had recently transitioned and gotten a legal name change. Even though Vlaming would refer to the student by his new name, the teacher said that using male pronouns would violate his own religious beliefs and free speech rights.
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Vlaming sued and was represented by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a massively influential Christian hate group that regularly mounts legal challenges to any expansion of LGBTQ+ civil rights. The King William Circuit Court dismissed Vlaming’s suit, finding that Vlaming hadn’t substantiated his legal case. But in 2023, the Virginia Supreme Court overturned the dismissal.
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“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,” said Vlaming in a statement following news of the settlement. “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.”
West Point Public Schools Superintendent Larry L. Frazier Jr. told The Washington Post that the district “will continue to be a place where all students feel safe, respected, and welcomed on a daily basis” and that the school is happy to have reached a settlement “that will not have a negative impact on the students, staff or school community of West Point.”
“Our focus is on all students, and our goal is to continue to build positive relationships throughout our school division community,” Frazier said.
A press release from ADF said the settlement also included the board clearing Vlaming’s firing from his record. The organization also wrote that the district agreed to change its policies “to conform to the new Virginia education policies established by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) that respect fundamental free speech and parental rights.”
In 2020, Virginia’s legislature passed a law requiring schools to adopt trans-inclusive policies. However, with the election of Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) later that year, he directed the state’s Department of Education (VDOE) to issue new policies requiring teachers to use a student’s legal name and the pronouns associated with their “biological sex.”
Some of the state’s largest school districts have been refusing to follow the policies, saying that federal and state anti-discrimination laws take precedence over the VDOE’s policies.
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