The Virginia school board must pay a “wrongfully fired” teacher who refused to use the student’s preferred pronouns

The Virginia-based West Point school board agreed to pay $575,000 in damages and legal fees to a former high school teacher after he refused to call a transgender student by his preferred pronouns.

“I was unfairly fired from my teaching job because my religious beliefs put me on a collision course with school administrators who dictated that teachers only represent one perspective on gender identity – their preferred perspective,” said Peter Vlaming.

“I loved teaching French and tried to be polite to every student in my class, but I was not allowed to say anything that directly violated my conscience,” he added. “I am very grateful to my attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom for leading my case to victory and hope that this helps protect the fundamental First Amendment rights of all other teachers and professors.”

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The settlement stems from a lawsuit that Alliance Defending Freedom filed against the school board in September 2019.

Vlaming, who taught French at West Point High School for seven years, lost his job after the board made a unanimous 5-0 decision to fire him.

Vlaming said he could not abide by the school district’s policy of addressing students with pronouns that do not match their biological gender.

According to ADF, “Vlaming attempted to accommodate the student by consistently using the student’s new preferred name and avoiding the use of pronouns entirely.”

However, school officials insisted that Vlaming used the student’s preferred pronouns and continued to use them “even when the student was not present,” the ADF alleged.

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“Peter wasn’t fired because of something he said; he was fired for something he couldn’t say. The school board violated his First Amendment rights under the Virginia Constitution and commonwealth law,” said Tyson Langhofer, ADF senior counsel.

A few months before Vlaming’s court victory, the Virginia Supreme Court reopened this case after it became deadlocked in a lower court. According to the Virginia Mercury, the King William Circuit Court “did not believe that Vlaming had good cause for the law to accept his lawsuit.”

“However, the Supreme Court found in December that the school board violated Vlaming’s rights,” the outlet reported.

The board did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Billing takes place afterwards Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin updated the “model policies” regarding the treatment of transgender students, claiming that the previous “policies disregarded the rights of parents.”

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