The Virginia school board is settling with a teacher fired over trans students’ pronouns

A Virginia school board has agreed to pay $575,000 in settlement to a former high school teacher who was fired after refusing 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 expunged Peter Vlaming’s criminal record. The former French teacher at West Point High School sued the school board and administrators 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, saying in an email Monday that “we are pleased to be able to reach a resolution that will not adversely impact students, staff or West Point school community.”

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

Vlaming claimed the school violated his constitutional right to speak freely and practice his religion. The school board stated that Vlaming violated the school’s anti-discrimination policy.

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

But a three-judge dissent said the majority’s opinion on his free exercise of religion claim was too broad and “established a sweeping super-scrutiny standard with the potential to override anyone’s objection to virtually any policy or law shield by claiming a religious standard. justification for their inability to follow either.”

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

Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin’s policy on the treatment of transgender students, finalized last year, reverses many accommodations for transgender students that the previous Democratic administration had pushed for, including allowing teachers and students to refer to a transgender student with the name and pronouns related to their gender assigned at birth.

Attorney General Jason Miyares, also a Republican, said in a nonbinding legal analysis that the policy was consistent with federal and state nondiscrimination laws and that school boards must follow their guidelines. Lawsuits filed earlier this year asked the courts to throw out the policy and rule that school districts are not required to follow it.

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Virginia K-12