NEW YORK, N.Y. — In a stinging decision, a federal appeals court has ruled the Vermont Principals’ Association clearly discriminated against the Mid Vermont Christian School in Quechee on religious grounds after it opted to forfeit a girls playoff basketball game against a high school team with a transgender athlete.
The VPA, in an unprecedented move, banished the Windsor County school in 2023 from its membership after 28 years as a loyal dues-paying and active member. MVCS maintained it was forced to take a forfeit when the VPA refused to consider the school’s protest over safety concerns. Mid Vermont contended the Long Trail School in Dorset was allowing a biologically born boy to play on the girls team, court records said.
“The school believes that forcing girls to compete against biological males would affirm that those males are females, in violation of its religious beliefs,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York City said in a unanimous decision Tuesday
“We conclude that Plaintiffs are likely to succeed in showing that the VPA’s expulsion of Mid Vermont was not neutral because it displayed hostility toward the school’s religious beliefs,” the three-judge panel said in its ruling.
The judges said they found open hostility by the VPA toward Mid Vermont Christian. The court also noted the VPA failed to follow its own rules and policies in its rush to dismiss the Christian school from the statewide association.
The ruling overturned a decision by Senior Federal Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford in Burlington that allowed the banishment to remain in place while the two sides battle in court. The case will continue, but the appeals court ruled the school can now participate in VPA-sponsored events.
“In sum, Plaintiffs are likely to succeed in establishing that Defendants acted with hostility toward Mid Vermont’s religious beliefs. The VPA Executive Director publicly castigated Mid Vermont – and religious schools generally – while the VPA rushed to judgement on whether and how to discipline the school,” the judges wrote.
“In upholding the expulsion, the VPA doubled down on that hostility by challenging the legitimacy of the school’s religious beliefs. And as noted above, the punishment imposed was unprecedented, overbroad and procedurally irregular,” the judges said in the 19-page decision.
“Those facts strongly support the inference that Mid Vermont’s religious objection was not considered with the neutrality that the Free Exercise Clause requires,” they said.
Jay Nichols, executive director of the VPA, said Tuesday he was unaware of any association official or employee that discriminated against any religious schools. He said he was precluded from adding any more comments because the litigation remains pending.
The judges ordered the case sent back to Vermont with instructions to grant Plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction to allow for Mid Vermont’s reinstatement as a VPA member.
Mid Vermont Christian School, founded in 1987, is a private faith-based pre-K-12 school in Windsor County, whose religious beliefs drive and form the foundation for everything it does. The school maintains having its girls team competing against a male-born athlete would have violated the school’s religious convictions. MVCS joined the VPA about 1993-94 when it fielded its first basketball team.
The Eagles have had some athletic success including most recently sharing the Division IV Vermont high school basketball crown in 2020 in a season cut short by COVID. MVCS (17-6) knocked off No. 1 West Rutland in the semifinals, but the final with Proctor was called off creating co-champs for the first time.
Mid Vermont and two families, including Chris and Bethany Goodwin of Quechee, filed the discrimination lawsuit against various state and local education officials for expelling the Christian school and its students from the state’s athletics association. When the lawsuit was filed in November 2023 the Goodwins had a son, A.G. , that was on the basketball and track teams. His sister, M.G., was an eighth grader, but played on the girls’ basketball team, records showed.
The plaintiffs are supported by The Alliance Defending Freedom, a nationally recognized law firm known for its First Amendment fights.
MVCS objected when its girls varsity basketball team was paired in the annual state tournament to play a team from the Long Trail School that featured a player born as a biological boy, but claiming to be a girl, the appeals court said.
Mid Vermont has said it had a serious concern that the transgender student, who was more than 6-feet tall, created an unsafe and unfair situation for its girls as a dominating male player, court records said.
The school voluntarily ended its season with a forfeit on Feb. 20, 2023 and said, in part, in a news release explaining the decision that “allowing biological males to participate in women’s sports sets a bad precedent for the future of women’s sports in general.”
Two days later, Nichols, testified before the House Education Committee in support of a legislative bill that would prevent private religious schools from receiving public funding. He said “we should never provide any tax dollars to schools that … look away from the common decency of all students being welcomed.”
He then attacked schools that had curricula that feature “Christian values,” the court said.
Three weeks later, the VPA banished Mid Vermont from the statewide association —not just basketball or sports, but all extracurricular activities. The ban covered spelling bees, science fairs, drama festivals and debate competitions.
The 19-page decision written for the court by Circuit Judge Michael H. Park took the VPA and Nichols to task for its failure to follow its own procedures. He was joined by Judges Richard C. Wesley and Richard J. Sullivan.
“The expulsion violated the VPA’s own norms. Nichols conceded that, to his recollection, the VPA had never before banned a school from all sporting events. That concession actually understated the severity of the decision, which extended to any interschool activity, from spelling bee to math competitions,” the court said.
“Making matters worse, the VPA ignored the detailed procedural requirements governing its disciplinary process. Those procedures called for a formal investigation, a preliminary report, written notice of a probable violation, a recommended penalty, and an opportunity to be hard at a hearing involving counsel and evidence. But in its rush to impose an ‘immediate’ expulsion, the VPA flouted its own rules,” the judges said.
They noted the Activities Standards Committee of the VPA maintained “it is a myth that transgender students endanger others when they participate in high school sports or create unfair competition.”
The VPA regulates middle and high school extracurricular activities and counts among its members every public and private high school in the state and describes itself as “an administrative arm of the state,” the judges noted.
Mid Vermont contacted the VPA in the fall of 2023 about reapplying for membership, but Nichols said the Committee’s decision is “binding” and “cannot now be challenged,” the court noted.
MVCS subsequently joined the New England Association of Christian Schools, but that caused a substantial financial increase due to time and travel. The league has two dozen schools spread across five states.
As recently as Aug. 14 during its annual Media Day, the VPA said it was standing by its position, even though nationally there has been a swing toward limiting women sports to women. Nichols’ assistant for student activities, Lauren Young, said the VPA allows students to participate based on how they identify and not by biology.
Crawford initially denied a request by the Plaintiffs for a preliminary injunction in June 2024. They appealed and also asked for an injunction pending the appeal, but Crawford said no again.
It was at that point that Crawford had questioned why the VPA was opposed to allowing MCVS students in non-athletic competitions. He helped broker a plan that the VPA reluctantly agreed with in the end to allow participation in non-sports.
As the case was headed for argument in April in New York City, Attorney Ryan Tucker, one of the ADF lawyers to argue the original case in Burlington, acknowledged the judicial and political landscapes had changed in the previous months and the outcome might be more favorable.
Tucker said more and more people fully understood the importance of keeping girls sports for girls and supporting the position of Mid Vermont and others fighting the battle.
The lawsuit was initially filed against Heather Bouchey, then-interim secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education; Jennifer Deck Samuelson, chair of the Vermont Education Board, Jay Nichols, executive director of the VPA, Christine Bourne, Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union; the Hartland School Board, Randall Gawel, school superintendent for the Orange East Supervisory Union, and the Waits River Valley School Board.
Zoie Saunders, the new Secretary of Education for Gov. Phil Scott, is now a named defendant replacing Bouchey in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit maintains there is irreparable harm, including financial, that the VPA and AOE has inflicted on the Mid Vermont Christian students and their families.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensation for damages inflicted.
A second set of parents and their two children from North Hartland also were part of the initial federal lawsuit, but withdrew because the case dragged on.
The mother reported they were moving their children to a New Hampshire high school for multiple reasons, including her son wanted to play football the next year.
He would have normally been able to join a local Vermont high school football team in the VPA’s “member to member” program, if Mid Vermont had not been banned by the association, she said.
