JUSTICE: School board to pay huge settlement to teacher fired for refusing to use trans student’s pronouns

5

For ads-free news, click here.

From ABC News: 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.

The school board claimed Vlaming had violated the school’s anti-discrimination policy, but Vlaming argued back that the school had violated his free speech and religious rights.  He won.

“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,” Vlaming said.

Alliance Defending Freedom cheered the settlement in a statement on social media:

‼️VICTORIOUS SETTLEMENT‼️. VA school board will pay $575K & change policies to end our lawsuit on behalf of teacher Peter Vlaming who was wrongly fired for declining to use inaccurate pronouns.

No government should force its employees (or anyone else) to voice their allegiance to an ideology that violates their deepest beliefs. We’re glad Peter had the courage to stand by his convictions—and thankful he’s now been vindicated.

IMPORTANT MESSAGE TO ALL DML NEWS APP READERS ABOUT COMMENTS ON ARTICLES: The feature on our website that automatically approves comments is currently down.  We are hoping it will be fixed this week, but it is out of our control. We are making every effort to come in every few minutes and manually push all pending comments out.  We apologize for the inconvenience and ask for your patience and understanding until this matter is resolved.  Please DO continue posting your comments.  Your interaction and feedback is still very important to us.  As usual, comments calling for violence or death toward any individual are not permitted.

The Dennis Michael Lynch Podcast archive is available below, with the most recent on top. Never miss an episode. Subscribe to the show by downloading The DML News App or go to Apple Podcasts.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

CLICK HERE FOR COMMENTS SECTION