Virginia School Board Agrees To Pay $575K to Teacher Fired for Refusing to Use Trans Student’s Pronouns
Teacher: “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.”
A Virginia school board has agreed to pay $575,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by a former teacher fired for refusing to use his transgender student’s preferred pronouns.
We covered the teacher’s case against the school here:
Peter Vlaming was a popular French teacher at West Point High School for almost seven years when he was suspended in 2018 for violating the school’s transgender pronoun policy. He was willing to use his transgender student’s preferred name, but avoided using third-person pronouns altogether. The school then warned him that refusing to say the student’s preferred pronouns violated its policy prohibiting discrimination and harassment based on gender identity. As a matter of conviction, he would not do so, and it cost him his job.
As the Virginia Supreme Court later put it, Vlaming was fired “not because of what he said but because of what he refused to say.”
Represented by The Alliance Defending Freedom, Vlaming sued the West Point School Board in 2019 for violating his civil rights. After years of litigation over whether he had a viable claim, the Virginia Supreme Court revived Vlaming’s lawsuit at the end of last year, sending it back to the trial court that dismissed it.
Writing for the state’s high court, Justice D. Arthur Kelsey made clear that the constitutional right to free speech “includes both the right to speak freely and the right to refrain from speaking at all.”
“Absent a truly compelling reason for doing so,” Judge Kelsey continued, “no government committed to these principles can lawfully coerce its citizens into pledging verbal allegiance to ideological views that violate their sincerely held religious beliefs.”
In a statement announcing the settlement, ADF said that in addition to paying $575,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees, the school board agreed to clear Vlaming’s firing from his record.
The school board also agreed, in a separate development, to conform its polices to Virginia’s new guidelines protecting free speech and parental rights to be informed about their child’s wellbeing, ADF announced.
Vlaming said,”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.” He hopes his victory will help protect other teachers from being fired by their schools for exercising their constitutionally protected free speech and religious rights.
Now that the settlement has been made public, schools know that if they do, it could come at a whopping price.
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Comments
One more reason to shut down the government-run indoctrination centers.
This isn’t a punishment for the Woke school board because these reprobates simply pass the bill along to the taxpayers who also detest Woke.
Sorry, but the voters in the district vote for the school board.
The school board appoints or hires the superintendent, who approves and hires the principals.
Therefore, the voters (taxpayers) should be on the hook for the cost of these lawsuits.
I agree that the offending party should pay out of pocket personally, and I can’t understand why the school board, the superintendent, and the principal have some kind of qualified immunity that protects them.
That’s not nearly enough money. He was fired 6-years ago. Avg. teacher’s salary in that school district is >$51K. So, he was owed no less than $306K in back pay alone. Worse yet, the person who violated his civil rights is financially unscathed. At the end of the day, it’s the taxpayers who are out the money. There are no adverse consequences here for the people who actually violated the law.
If a school district fired a teacher because they were black or homosexual, do you think the settlement would only be $500K? Of course not.
What about the Bozo(s) who cost the taxpayers half a million dollars? Do they/them just get to keep their jobs?
zeiiir jobs
That’s up to the local voters. If the local Citizens want to vote them out of office they can. I suspect that any enthusiasm to drive them out of office will decline over time and that the staggered terms will end up protecting some or even all the school board members. Ultimately if the voters won’t muster the dedication to act over multiple election cycles to bring sufficient pressure on the elected school board to modify policies and fire idiot administrators then additional consequences won’t materialize.
Well sort of. They can vote out the school board but not the Principal and others in the education bureaucracy.
much easier to use tax money to avenge their hate for civility
AND STILL KEEP doing their lefty indoctrination
parents
take your money away from the schools
come on gop where are you on this!!!?!!?!
Plaintiffs shouldn’t even have to resort to asserting religious freedom grounds to this obnoxious tranny totalitarianism. It is a brazen assault on science and reason.
The school board was violating the child’s rights by forcing school personnel into fostering and encouraging the poor childs mental delusions.
These lawsuits need to target the individuals responsible, not just the school district.
Unless and until there is significant financial pain in being an anti-science woke ‘tard in education, and unless these suits also bring about changes in these ridiculous unconstitutional policies, this is a win only for that specific teacher.
The school board just spent probably million dollars (including their own attorney’s fees) of taxpayer money to get rid of someone who doesn’t agree with them. I’m sure they think that’s worth it. Now they can do all their crazy woke brainwashing and grooming without dissent.
The school system is also on the hook for over six years of attorneys fees, at least the court is letting the teacher keep the full amount and not letting the lawyers take a huge chunk off the top.
I was curious as to whether this case fell within beleaguered Loudoun County, but… no, Prince William. Still well “north of Richmond.”
Actually no. It’s East of Richmond, in King William County, not Prince William County. (I know. Sometimes it’s hard to keep these Royals and their offspring straight!)
Wow. Lived in Virginia 12 years and never even knew there was a King William County!