The West Point School Board in Virginia agreed to pay $575,000 in damages and legal fees to Peter Vlaming, a teacher fired in 2018 for refusing to use a transgender student’s preferred pronouns. Vlaming, a French teacher, claimed that his termination violated his First Amendment rights, prompting a lawsuit. After multiple court rulings, the Virginia Supreme Court reinstated his case in December, ruling that the school board had indeed violated his rights.
Vlaming was represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which argued that his dismissal was not for something he said, but for something he couldn’t say due to his beliefs. ADF Senior Counsel Tyson Langhofer stated that Vlaming’s refusal to speak what he believed to be untrue should not have resulted in punishment. As part of the settlement, the school board cleared Vlaming’s firing record and revised its policies to align with guidelines introduced by Governor Glenn Youngkin’s administration, which reversed the previous administration’s stance on gender identity policies in schools.
Vlaming expressed that he was wrongfully fired for his religious beliefs and criticized the school’s insistence on a single perspective regarding gender identity.
