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

“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.

ADF attorneys filed the lawsuit in September 2019, after Vlaming — who had taught in the district for nearly seven years — was fired a year earlier for failing to use a student’s requested pronouns that were “inconsistent with the student’s sex.” 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 loved teaching French and gracefully tried to accommodate every student in my class, but I couldn’t say something that directly violated my conscience,” Vlaming said, adding that he was wrongfully terminated because of his religious beliefs.

“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.”

In December, Virginia’s Supreme Court reinstated Vlaming’s lawsuit, claiming school administrators violated Vlaming’s right to exercise his religion freely.

“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,” Justice D. Arthur Kelsey wrote in last year’s majority opinion.

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.

West Point Public Schools told The Washington Post on Monday it was pleased to have reached a settlement with Vlaming.

“Our focus is on all students, and our goal is to continue to build positive relationships throughout our school division community,” said schools superintendent Larry L. Frazier Jr.

With the settlement, ADF attorneys have filed a voluntary dismissal of Vlaming v. West Point School Board.