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Teacher Fired For Refusing To Use Trans Student’s Pronouns Wins Settlement
Charlie Kirk Staff
10/03/2024
A Virginia school board has been ordered to pay over $500,000 to Peter Vlaming, a former French teacher who was dismissed for refusing to use a transgender student’s preferred pronouns.
Vlaming, with the support of the Christian legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), filed a lawsuit against the district, arguing that his termination in 2018 violated 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,” Vlaming said in a statement after the settlement was awarded. “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.”
Before the incident that resulted in his firing, Vlaming taught French at West Point High School in Virginia for nearly a decade. In 2018, he was placed on administrative leave after he raised objections to referring to a biological female student using male pronouns.
The teacher tried to avoid using pronouns altogether to accommodate everyone. He also agreed to refer to the student by their new masculine name instead of her birth name.
However, this was insufficient for the district, which mandated that Vlaming stop avoiding pronoun usage and explicitly use the student’s preferred pronouns. Shortly after, the board voted to terminate his employment after he inadvertently referred to the student using feminine pronouns.
Vlaming filed suit against the school board for violating his rights under the Virginia Constitution and commonwealth law stating in his lawsuit that his religion “prohibits him from intentionally lying” and that he “sincerely believes that referring to a female as a male by using an objectively male pronoun is telling a lie,” CBN reported.
