Peter Vlaming in 2018. (WRIC)
A French teacher has settled with the Virginia school board that fired him for refusing to use a transgender boy’s pronouns.
Peter Vlaming will receive $575,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees, said his legal team at the Alliance Defending Freedom, a far-right advocacy organization known for filing lawsuits aimed at rolling back the rights of gay, lesbian, and transgender people.
“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,” he 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. I’m very grateful for the work of my attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom to bring my case to victory, and hope it helps protect every other teacher and professor’s fundamental First Amendment rights.”
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West Point Public Schools Superintendent Larry Frazier told Newport News outlet The Daily Press that “we are pleased to be able to reach a resolution that will not have a negative impact on the students, staff or school community of West Point.”
The Virginia Supreme Court last December reinstated Vlaming’s lawsuit, which the Circuit Court of King William County had previously dismissed.
“[N]o 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 decision also said. The judges found that the lower court “erred dismissing this claim on demurrer on the ground that Vlaming’s factual allegations, even if assumed to be true, were insufficient as a matter of law to state a free-exercise claim” under Virginia law.
In its ruling, the Virginia High Court said that hurt feelings are sometimes the cost of free speech.
“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 opinion said.
Justice Thomas Peter Mann, who concurred in part and dissented in part, said he agreed with the majority opinion that the circuit court made a mistake and that Vlaming’s lawsuit was “legally viable.” Nonetheless, he said the majority mishandled their analysis of the plaintiff’s claims.
“Regarding Vlaming’s free-exercise claim, the majority establishes a sweeping super scrutiny standard with the potential to shield any person’s objection to practically any policy or law by claiming a religious justification for their failure to follow either,” he wrote (citations omitted). “Justice Antonin Scalia, writing on behalf of the Supreme Court of the United States, warned that interpreting a free exercise clause so broadly would permit an individual ‘to become a law unto himself.’ Under the majority’s analytical framework, all laws and regulations must yield to an individual’s invocation of religious freedom unless doing so results in ‘overt acts against peace and good order.’ I disagree.”
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