Just days after West Point Public Schools reached a half-million dollar settlement with Vlaming, attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom filed a Motion for Summary Judgement on behalf of its three clients. Those clients filed a First Amendment lawsuit in 2022 against the Harrisonburg City School Board.
Alarmed by a liberal transgender policy that violates their beliefs, the teachers sued their employer to stop the policy that forces them to affirm a child’s gender identity and also hide it from their parents.
According to ADF attorney Hal Frampton, the school board instructed teachers to “immediately do it in all situations, and do it even if the parents haven't been notified, or you don't have the parent’s consent.”
The lawsuit against Harrisonburg, filed in Rockingham County Circuit Court, names three teachers and two sets of parents as plaintiffs.
Two years after that lawsuit was filed, former West Point teacher Peter Vlaming has reached a court settlement with his former employer after being terminated from his high school job. Citing his own conscience and his religious faith, Vlaming refused to refer to a female student as “he” or “him” and was fired for doing so.
ADF represented Flaming in his lawsuit, which dates backs to 2019.
Last week, in its Oct. 3 court ruling, the Virginia Supreme Court ordered West Point to pay Vlaming $575,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees as part of a settlement between both parties. The state’s high court also said – in a key criticism – that West Point had terminated Vlaming after compelling him to do something that violated his religious beliefs.
In that ruling, the high court wrote that the Virginia Constitution “seeks to protect diversity of thought, diversity of speech, diversity of religion, and diversity of opinion.”
Further down in the opinion, the state court wrote that “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.”
In light of that state court ruling, ADF is now asking the circuit court to rule quickly on behalf of its teacher and parent plaintiffs at Harrisonburg.
"We don't think there are any real disputes of fact here," says Frampton. "We think we win on the law, so go ahead and please grant judgment in our favor."
