Attorney General Jason Miyares’ office has filed a brief with the state Supreme Court backing a former West Point teacher who was fired in 2018 for refusing to use a transgender student’s preferred pronouns.
Miyares’ office argues, in part, that a 2007 state law, the Virginia Religious Freedom Restoration Act, barred the West Point School Board from firing Peter Vlaming “because of his religious objection to the School Board’s pronoun-usage rule.”
The brief also asserts that the School Board’s firing of Vlaming “violated Virginia’s robust constitutional free-exercise protections, which reflect the Commonwealth’s pioneering history of defending religious freedom.”
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In his own brief, Vlaming’s lawyers argue that Virginia law offers broader protections of religious expression than “the watered-down version of the federal right” in the U.S. Constitution.
Vlaming, who taught French at West Point High School, was fired in December 2018 after resisting administrators’ orders to use male pronouns when referring to a freshman student who had undergone a gender transition.
Vlaming later sued the School Board. A King William County Circuit Court judge dismissed the case. Vlaming now wants the state Supreme Court to find that the court erred, reverse the decision and send it back to the lower court.
Superintendent Laura Abel told the West Point School Board in 2018 that Vlaming refused orders from administrators to refer to the student using male pronouns. Because of his refusal, Abel said, she recommended he be fired.
Vlaming agreed to use the student’s new, male name. But he tried to avoid using any pronouns — he or him, and she or her — when referring to the student. The student said that made him feel uncomfortable and singled out.
Administrators sided with the boy, telling Vlaming he could not treat his transgender pupil differently than he treats others.
“That discrimination then leads to creating a hostile learning environment,” Abel said at the time. “And the student had expressed that. The parent had expressed that. They felt disrespected.”
Attorney Stacy Haney, who was representing the school district, said at the time: “Does this board expect its employees to follow its policies or not?”
In Vlaming’s opening brief to the state Supreme Court, his lawyers, with Alliance Defending Freedom, say the School Board fired “a liked and well respected high-school French teacher, simply because Vlaming declined to affirmatively express his personal agreement with messages that violate his religious beliefs.
“Specifically, he declined the School’s and a parent’s demand that he use biologically incorrect ‘preferred pronouns’ to show a student who identified as transgender that he affirmed and agreed with that identity.
“Vlaming could not affirm and agree that a person’s sex is determined by their beliefs rather than biology. He could not speak religious messages that he does not believe to be true. He could not lie to his students.”
The filing said he offered to use the student’s preferred name and avoid using pronouns in the student’s presence. “But that wasn’t good enough for the student’s parent or the School. So they fired him.”
Vlaming acknowledges in his brief that he slipped in one instance during a class activity in which the student was using a virtual reality headset. The student was about to run into a wall, and Vlaming told others to stop “her.”
Vlaming’s lawyers write that “At its core, the overarching question presented is a narrow one: whether public school teachers can be forced to violate their religious beliefs by expressing personal agreement with the government’s viewpoint on an issue of public concern.
“The answer is a resounding, ‘No.’ “
Vlaming’s brief says that he has been turned down for multiple teaching positions with other school divisions “because the School fired him based on accusations he discriminated against one of his students.” It says that when Vlaming could not find a teaching job after the School Board fired him, he moved back to France to look for work.
In March 2020, then-Gov. Ralph Northam signed a law requiring school divisions to adopt policies regarding treatment of transgender students. During this year’s regular legislative session Senate Democrats stopped a bill that would have repealed the requirement.
Debate over policy regarding transgender students has roiled the Hanover County School Board this year, leading to a couple of student protests.
At the heart of the issue in Hanover is the treatment of transgender and nonbinary students, specifically their use of school bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity.
The board voted down a policy change last November that would have allowed that. A month later, the ACLU of Virginia filed a lawsuit against the board on behalf of the parents of five transgender students.