Court Vindicates Teacher with Courage to NOT Say What Isn’t True

Author: John Stonestreet

Late last month, Virginia teacher Peter Vlaming won an important legal battle against the high school that fired him. Back in 2018, the well-liked French teacher was placed on administrative leave by West Point High School for failing to comply with the school district’s policy concerning preferred pronouns. Though Vlaming was willing to accommodate a request by a female student to use her chosen male name, he refused to refer to the student with the pronouns “he” or “him.”  

To be clear, Vlaming did not use female pronouns either. Rather, he chose to avoid using any pronouns to refer to the student. The school superintendent, however, told Vlaming that he could not avoid using the male pronouns, even when the student wasn’t present. Vlaming refused these demands, and within a few short weeks, was fired.  

In other words, Vlaming was fired for what he did not say, or as Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Tyson Langhofer put it, “what he couldn’t say ... in good conscience.”  

Vlaming filed a lawsuit against the school in 2019. A lower court threw out the case, but, in 2023, the Supreme Court of Virginia reinstated the lawsuit, stating: 

Absent a truly compelling reason for doing so, no government committed to these principles [of free speech and freedom of religion] can lawfully coerce its citizens into pledging verbal allegiance to ideological views that violate their sincerely held religious beliefs. 

On September 30 of this year, the West Point School Board decided to settle the case and agreed to pay Vlaming over half a million dollars in damages and attorney fees. The firing was also cleared from his employment record.  

Vlaming is one of a growing number who have been fired for refusing to comply with pronoun policies or, in some cases, dissenting from gender ideology in their research. While some have been vindicated, others are still waiting for courts to rule in their favor. In other cases involving schools, parents have learned in horror that their children were being transitioned with the help of school administrators without their knowledge or permission.  

Contrary to what proponents claim, policies that support the social transition of children are not “kind.” Nor are they aimed at “what’s best for the kids.” Rather, these policies enable and protect practices that cause irreversible harm. This includes policies about pronouns. 

A pronoun matters because language matters. Language should match reality, not distort it. This is true for everyone everywhere, but especially for those who teach our children. Educators should not lie about reality, nor should the state force them to do so.  

While it may seem insignificant, using a pronoun that does not correspond to a person’s sex denies the truth of reality—that every person is made in God’s image as either male or female. In other words, to use the wrong pronoun is to tell a lie. To require the wrong pronoun is an additional lie, and lies beget more lies. All forms of “social transitioning” pave the way for chemical or even surgical transitioning, all of which wreak devastating results. That’s why the loving thing to do then is to speak the truth.  

While we can be grateful for court rulings like this, it’s tragic that we need them. That means we have school policies and state laws that do not uphold the truth but rather force teachers and administrators to lie. Thankfully, there are some states, like Virginia and Florida, that require public schools to protect kids, parents, and teachers from harmful policies. Hopefully, more states and schools will follow suit. 

To learn more about why “preferred pronoun” policies are unloving, be sure to watch our free What Would You Say video resource, “Should I use Preferred Pronouns?”