A federal court says the state of Vermont must allow a Christian school to once again compete in state-sponsored sports events after it was banned for forfeiting a girls’ basketball game because a transgender student was on the opposing team.
The Mid Vermont Christian School conceded the game in February 2023. The next month, the executive council of the Vermont Principals’ Association accused the school of violating its policy on race, gender, and disability awareness and banned it from competing in future state-sponsored events.
In 2024, the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the school, sued, arguing the VPA’s punishment violated the First Amendment.
On Tuesday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit granted a preliminary injunction and ordered the school to be reinstated in the VPA and remanded the case for further proceedings. The school will be allowed to participate in state-sponsored sporting events while the case proceeds.
“Mid Vermont Christian School forfeited a girls’ playoff basketball game to avoid playing a team with a transgender athlete,” the judge who wrote the opinion, Geoffrey Crawford, 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 court found that Mid Vermont Christian School was “likely to succeed” in its argument that its expulsion from the VPA violated its First Amendment rights and was “not neutral because it displayed hostility toward the school’s religious beliefs.”
Judge Crawford noted that days after Mid Vermont Christian School forfeited the game, the executive director of the VPA, Jay Nichols, testified in support of a bill in the state legislature that would prevent religious schools from receiving public funding, saying, “We should never provide any tax dollars to schools that … look away from the common decency of all students being welcomed.” The judge added that Mr. Nichols also complained “about schools whose curricula feature ‘Christian values.’”
“Based on the undisputed record, we conclude that Plaintiffs are likely to succeed in establishing that the VPA’s decision was indeed accompanied by official expressions of hostility to religion,” Judge Crawford wrote. “The VPA’s executive director publicly castigated Mid Vermont — and religious schools generally — while the VPA rushed to judgment on whether and how to discipline the school.”
The court found that the punishment was “unprecedented, overbroad, and procedurally irregular.”
A senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, David Cortman, reacted to the ruling, saying in a statement, “The government cannot punish religious schools — and the families they serve — by permanently kicking them out of state-sponsored sports simply because the state disagrees with their religious beliefs.”
“For over two years, state officials have denied Mid Vermont Christian School a public benefit available to all other schools in Vermont just because it stood by the widely held, biblical belief that boys and girls are different,” Mr. Cortman added.
The VPA did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication.
