A lawsuit filed by an Ohio middle school teacher who resigned rather than participate in her students’ social transitioning is headed for trial, a federal judge has ruled.
The teacher, Vivian Geraghty, objected to using her transgender students’ preferred names and pronouns on religious grounds.
We’ve covered disputes over preferred pronoun use in many contexts, such as the health care setting, government workplaces, and universities.
But when these cases come up in the public schools, they’re not about mere “misgendering.” The subjects are minors, and using their preferred names and pronouns is part of “social transitioning,” the process that facilitates their decision to “become” the opposite sex. It also puts them on the path to permanent, life-altering medical transitioning.
Geraghty wanted no part of it, she told her school principal one morning. According to the lawsuit, the principal suggested a workaround using only the trans students’ preferred names—it would be like calling someone named John “Jack,” he ventured—but Geraghty still objected: She would know that behind the new name was a social transition, something she could not participate in because it was against her religion.
After two more meetings the same morning, Geraghty and the school were at an impasse, according to the record. She resigned and later sued the school in federal court, alleging she was forced to quit because she refused to use the trans students’ preferred names and pronouns, in violation of her First Amendment rights, including free speech, compelled speech and free exercise of religion.
While the dispute will ultimately be resolved at trial, the district court’s ruling paves the way for Geraghty to prevail on her civil rights claims.
The court agreed that the school’s name and pronoun practice amounted to compelled speech. The school allegedly caused Geraghty to resign “not for what she said, but for what she refused to say,” it held.
And it was not part of her ordinary job duties to convey (or refuse to convey) the message that those names and pronouns carried, the court continued:
Geraghty was a middle school English Language Arts teacher. … Her job was to teach English …. It was not her job ‘to teach anything with regard to LGBTQ issues.’ … Indeed, ‘gender identity and sexual orientation’ were not part of the middle school curriculum at all.
And, again, while the parties’ claims and defenses remain in dispute, the court shot down several of the school’s key arguments, one after another.
The school downplayed the use of preferred names and pronouns as a “standard back-and-forth ritual of greeting,” nothing more than a “non-ideological ministerial task,” it argued.
But if the name carried no message, why would it matter what name Geraghty used to address her trans students? “[S]uch a sanitized view of language,” the court said, “ignores the reality that ‘titles and pronouns carry a message.'”
When the school compelled Geraghty to use the students’ preferred names and pronouns, it forced her to “wade into a matter of public concern,” the court determined.
The court also rejected the school’s contention that by refraining from speaking, Geraghty was forcing her religious beliefs on her students.
And it nixed the school’s argument that its name and pronoun policy was necessary to comply with Title IX— a ruling that comes at a time when the fate of the Biden/Harris Title IX rewrite sits in limbo across the country. The evidence that a student “looked uncomfortable” when Geraghty failed to use the student’s preferred name did not “rise to the level” of a Title IX violation. And even if it did, Title IX “likely” will not extend to discrimination based on gender identity, the court concluded based on the Sixth Circuit’s recent ruling.
The court also showed Geraghty’s religious freedom claim a way forward. While the school’s name and pronoun practice “might look neutral and generally applicable,” that’s not how it worked, the court explained:
Before the first meeting, the District’s practice was an ‘implied’ and ’embraced’ ‘best practice,’ and non-compliance with the practice could, or could not, subject a teacher to discipline, to be determined on a ‘case-by-case’ basis.Yet after three meetings during the morning spanning only a few hours, Geraghty’s refusal to comply with the practice had become a ‘line in the sand,’ which, once crossed, led to Geraghty’s resignation.
The school district was using an evolving policy as pretext for targeting Geraghty’s beliefs, the court said.
Geraghty’s case against the school is far from over. There are genuine disputes of material fact over whether her resignation was voluntary or involuntary. And the parties’ experts disagreed over whether use of students’ preferred names and pronouns creates a “safe and supportive” learning environment. These and other questions will have to be resolved at trial.
For now, though, the court just signaled its willingness to uphold the teacher’s claims, should the jury find the facts in her favor.
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