A Virginia school district has agreed to pay more than $500,000 in damages and attorney fees to settle a lawsuit brought by a former high school teacher who was fired over a controversy involving pronouns. At issue was a lawsuit filed in 2019 by French teacher Peter Vlaming, who was dismissed by West Point High School for declining to use male pronouns in reference to a student who is biologically female but identifies as male. The school rejected a compromise by Vlaming, who had agreed to use the student’s preferred name instead of the student’s given name.

Vlaming’s suit alleged the school violated both his religious liberty and free speech rights.

In January, the Virginia Supreme Court sided with Vlaming, ruling that the state 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,” the court ruled.

The West Point School Board has agreed to pay $575,000 in damages and attorney fees to settle the lawsuit. It also cleared the dismissal from his record.

“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. “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.”

Alliance Defending Freedom represented Vlaming.

“Peter wasn’t fired for something he said; he was fired for something he couldn’t say,” said ADF senior counsel Tyson Langhofer. “The school board violated his First Amendment rights under the Virginia Constitution and commonwealth law. As a teacher, Peter was passionate about the subject he taught, was well-liked by his students, and did his best to accommodate their needs and requests. But he couldn’t in good conscience speak messages that he knew were untrue, and no school board or government official can punish someone for that reason.”

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