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Officials at Mid Vermont Christian School say the state is committing unconstitutional religious discrimination.
A Vermont Christian school that was penalized for refusing to let its girls’ basketball team play against one that included a transgender girl is suing state agencies.
In February, Mid Vermont Christian School forfeited a state tournament game against Long Trail School because the latter team had a trans player and dropped out of the tournament altogether. “We withdrew from the tournament because we believe playing against an opponent with a biological male jeopardizes the fairness of the game and the safety of our players,” Vicky Fogg, head of the Christian school, said in a statement at the time. “Allowing biological males to participate in women’s sports sets a bad precedent for the future of women’s sports in general.”
The following month, the executive council of the Vermont Principals’ Association, which oversees school sports and other activities, ruled that Mid Vermont Christian could not compete in any future tournaments because it had violated the association’s antidiscrimination policies. Also, the state’s Agency of Education declined to designate the school as an approved independent school, which makes it eligible to participate in a tuition assistance program.
Mid Vermont Christian filed a federal lawsuit last Tuesday against the principals’ association and the Agency of Education, alleging it has been subjected to “unconstitutional religious discrimination and hostility,” as the suit says.
“The State of Vermont has adopted its own orthodoxy on human sexuality and gender,” says the suit, filed in U.S. District Court. “Simply put, the State believes sex is mutable and biological differences do not matter. … The State is entitled to its own views, but it is not entitled, nor is it constitutional, to force private, religious schools across the state to follow that orthodoxy as a condition to participating in Vermont’s tuitioning program and the State’s athletic association.”
The tuition program “pays for students in communities that do not have a public school to attend other public schools or approved private schools of their choice,” the Associated Press explains. To be eligible, a school must assure that it adheres to state nondiscrimination law regarding employment and public accommodations. Vermont bans discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in these and other venues.
Mid Vermont Christian is represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a nonprofit law firm that has represented many anti-LGBTQ+ clients and has taken some cases all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Vermont has an infamous record of discriminating against religious schools and families, whether it be withholding generally available public funding or denying them membership in the state’s sports league because they hold religious beliefs that differ from the state’s preferred views,” ADF Senior Counsel Ryan Tucker, director of the ADF Center for Christian Ministries, said in a press release. “The state’s unlawful exclusion of Mid Vermont Christian from participating in the tuition program and athletic association is the latest example of state officials trampling on constitutionally protected rights.”
The Supreme Court ruled last year in a case out of Maine that students in religious schools couldn’t be excluded from a tuition assistance program similar to Vermont’s.
The principals’ association and the Agency of Education haven’t commented on the suit so far.
