Former teacher Peter Vlaming will be paid $575K in damages and attorneys fees after he was fired by a Virginia school board for failing to use a transgender student's requested pronouns. Vlaming said he was "wrongfully fired" from his teaching job because of his "religious beliefs." Photo courtesy of Alliance Defending Freedom
Deuteronomy 22:5 “A woman shall not wear a man's garment, nor shall a man put on a woman's cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.
Important Takeaways:
- In addition to Monday’s financial settlement, West Point School Board agreed to change its policies and clear teacher Peter Vlaming’s firing from its record.
- The agreement comes nearly a year after Virginia’s Supreme Court reinstated Vlaming’s lawsuit, which was filed by the Christian legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom.
- “Peter wasn’t fired for 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 ADF senior counsel Tyson Langhofer.
- While Vlaming tried to accommodate the student by using the student’s new name, school officials ordered the teacher to stop avoiding the use of the requested pronouns
- “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.”
- West Point Public Schools has agreed to change its rules and conform to Virginia’s new education policies, which call for respecting free speech and parental rights. The policies, which were criticized by LGBTQ groups when they were unveiled in 2022, allow teachers to refer to transgender students by the name and pronouns associated with their sex assigned at birth.
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