Peter Vlaming, a longtime high school French teacher in Virginia, was fired in 2018 for refusing to use a student’s preferred pronouns. On Monday, after years of litigation and a win for Vlaming at the Virginia Supreme Court, the school board finally capitulated and agreed to settle the case for $575,000.
But the West Point School Board’s refusal for five years to protect Vlaming’s free speech and religious freedom rights came with an exorbitant price tag.
In 2018, one of Vlaming’s female students at West Point High School began identifying as a transgender male. Although Vlaming consistently used the student’s preferred name, the French teacher carefully avoided using third-person pronouns so as not to violate his own religious beliefs.
That courtesy wasn’t good enough for West Point’s school board and school administrators. When Vlaming refused to use…
