Teacher fired for refusing to use student's preferred pronouns secures religious freedom victory

A Virginia teacher fired for refusing to use a student's so-called preferred pronouns had his lawsuit against the school board revived by the Virginia Supreme Court Thursday in a landmark victory for religious freedom.

Peter Vlaming was a high school French teacher at West Point Schools when he was terminated for refraining from using pronouns that denied a student's biological sex, which he argued would violate his religious beliefs, Blaze News previously reported. Instead, when referring to the female student, who claimed to identify as male, Vlaming carefully avoided using any pronouns.

The teacher agreed to call the student by a preferred name and even encouraged all students in his class to select a new French name for the duration of the course so that the trans-identifying student would not feel singled out.

Unsatisfied with Vlaming's work-around, the West Point School Board ordered him to use the student's preferred pronouns. When the educator refused, the student lodged a complaint against him.

School administrators accused Vlaming of violating harassment and nondiscrimination policies. In a 5-0 vote, the school board ended his employment in 2018.

"Mr. Vlaming was recommended for termination due to his insubordination and repeated refusal to comply with directives made to him by multiple WPPS administrators. That discrimination then leads to creating a hostile learning environment. And the student had expressed that. The parent had expressed that. They felt disrespected," West Point Schools Superintendent Laura Abel stated.

In 2019, Vlaming filed a lawsuit against the school board, but the Virginia Circuit Court dismissed the case. The Virginia Supreme Court decided Thursday to reverse the lower court's ruling, reviving Vlaming's case.

"The issue here is not whether the School Board's policies forbidding discrimination and harassment of students applied (as the School Board asserts) or did not apply (as Vlaming asserts) to the compelled-speech situation alleged in the complaint. The issue is whether Vlaming's sincerely held religious beliefs caused him to commit overt acts that 'invariably posed some substantial threat to public safety, peace or order,'" the court's ruling contended, "and if so, whether the government's compelling state interest in protecting the public from that threat, when examined under the rigors of strict scrutiny, could be satisfied by 'less restrictive means.'

"When religious liberty merges with free-speech protections, as it does in this case, mere 'objectionable' and 'hurtful' religious speech or, as in this case, nonspeech, is not enough to meet this standard," the ruling continued. In the opinion, the court stated that Virginia's constitution "seeks to protect diversity of thought, diversity of speech, diversity of religion, and diversity of opinion."

"Absent a truly compelling reason for doing so, 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," it added.

Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Chris Schandevel, who represented Vlaming, stated, "Peter wasn't fired for something he said; he was fired for something he couldn't say. The Virginia Supreme Court rightly agreed that Peter's case against the school board for violating his rights under the Virginia Constitution and state law should proceed."

"The West Point School Board violated that constitutional command when it tried to force Vlaming to endorse the school's ideological viewpoints on gender identity," Schandevel said. "And the Virginia Supreme Court rightly vindicated Vlaming's right to stand by his convictions in its decision."

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