Teacher was wrongly fired for refusing to use “preferred pronouns.” He will receive $575,000

A French teacher at a Virginia high school has won $575,000 after he was fired for refusing to use a student’s “preferred pronouns.”

Peter Vlaming was a popular teacher at West Point High School. When one of his students began appearing as a man and using male pronouns in 2018, Vlaming struggled with how to respond. He believes – for religious, philosophical and scientific reasons – that sex is an innate biological trait.

Vlaming tried to accommodate the student by using her new chosen name and completely refraining from using pronouns.

But that wasn’t good enough for the West Virginia school board. The principal asked Vlaming to address the student using pronouns that did not match her gender. When he refused, he was fired by the school authorities. In response, Vlaming filed a lawsuit against the school board with the help of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).

Last December, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled in Vlaming’s favor, issuing a landmark decision reaffirming that the Virginia Constitution protects public servants’ rights to free speech and free exercise of religion.

“Without a truly compelling reason for doing so, no government committed to these principles can lawfully compel its citizens to verbally pledge allegiance to ideological views that violate their sincerely held religious beliefs,” Justice D. Arthur Kelsey wrote in the majority opinion of the court.

Following that decision, the West Point school board agreed to pay $575,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees to resolve the lawsuit. The school board also deleted Vlaming’s records and changed its policies to align with Virginia’s new education guidelines protecting parental rights.

“I was unfairly fired from my teaching job because my religious beliefs put me on a collision course with school leadership, which mandated that teachers only represent one perspective on gender identity – their preferred perspective,” Vlaming said in a statement after the settlement.

I loved teaching French and tried to be polite to every student in my class, but I was not allowed to say anything that would directly offend my conscience. I am very grateful to my attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom for leading my case to victory and hope that this will help protect the First Amendment rights of all other teachers and professors.

You can watch a short video summary of Vlaming’s case below:

“Peter wasn’t fired for anything he said; “He was fired for something he couldn’t say,” said ADF senior counsel Tyson Langhofer, director of the ADF Center for Academic Freedom.

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 respond to their needs and desires. But he couldn’t in good conscience speak out messages he knew were untrue, and no school board or government official can punish anyone for that reason.

Vlaming’s victory after a protracted legal battle is a major victory for free speech, religious freedom and biological reality. No one should be forced by the government to express messages they disagree with – including Christians who know that sex is innate and unchangeable.

Congratulations to Peter Vlaming on his hard-fought and well-deserved victory.

The case is Vlaming v. West Point School Board.

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Teacher fired for not using student’s “preferred pronouns.”

Photo by Alliance Defending Freedom.