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Christian Teacher Suspended For Refusing To Budge On Biblical Stance On Sexuality Scores Major Supreme Court Win

The Supreme Court in Virginia has rejected an appeal from Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS), therefore enforcing a lower court ruling that ordered the school district to reinstate Christian teacher Tanner Cross, who was suspended for refusing to call transgender students by their preferred pronouns.

Over the summer, Cross made headlines when he vowed not to “lie” to his students about girls becoming boys and vice versa, in protest of the Loudon Schools’ new transgender policies. The school board implemented policies that forced teachers to address transgender students by their preferred names and pronouns and allowed students to use whichever bathrooms were aligned with their gender identity.

According to Fox News, Twelfth Circuit Judge James E. Plowman in June approved the Christian teacher’s request to hit pause on the county’s decision to suspend him. The judge said that Cross was likely to succeed if he pushed through with a trial, stating that LCPS violated his First Amendment Rights and that reinstating the Christian teacher would be within “public interest.”

The judge also dismissed LCPS’ claim that it only suspended Cross not because of his statements but because of the disruption that ensued. But the events that unfolded showed how the school was infringing on the Christian teacher’s religious rights.

“All we’re asking for really is accommodation for all teachers to be able to speak without being forced to speak things that they believe are untrue and that are harmful to students,” Tyson Langhofer, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents Cross, said. “The accommodation they’re seeking is they would use whatever name students want, they just want to be able to avoid using pronouns that are inconsistent with a student’s biological sex.”

According to WND, the lower court decided that LCPS’ suspension of Cross was unconstitutional due to the fact that he was suspended after his speech, which is protected by the First Amendment. The lower court then ordered Cross to be reinstated and the LCPS decided to appeal to a higher court, but was unsuccessful.

The judge reasoned that there was little evidence of actual “disruption” and that the Christian teacher at the time of his speech was speaking as a citizen on a matter of public concern.

The judge argued that the loss of First Amendment freedoms “for even minimal periods of time” is “irreparable” and that “similarly situated employees” in the district have already been “chilled from speech” because of the LCPS’ school board’s decisions.

He added, “Enjoining a retaliatory suspension will not serve to harm the defendants. Further, it will serve to restore, to some degree, the reputation of the plaintiff that may have been harmed by defendants’ actions.”

The judge also said that Cross’ termination was “an unnecessary and vindictive act.” Following the case, several other teachers are being added as plaintiffs. ABC13 News reported that LCPS’ appeal to the Supreme Court read, “While LCPS respects the rights of public-school employees to free speech and free exercise of religion, those rights do not outweigh the rights of students to be educated in a supportive and nurturing environment.”

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‘It’s appalling’: OC Education Board Member Calls Out Teacher Who Instructed Students to Pledge Allegiance to Gay Pride Flag

“I urge all men and women of faith to band together and oppose this tyrannical evil of critical theories being promoted by ungodly men and women.”

QUICK FACTS:
  • Dr. Ken Williams—a member on the Orange County Board of Education—told American Faith that he was “appalled” when he learned a teacher within the Newport-Mesa Unified School District had taken down the American flag in her classroom and suggested her students instead pledge allegiance to the gay pride flag.
  • The Newport-Mesa teacher, Kristin Pitzen, posted a TikTok video (below) in which she can be seen explaining how she tells her students to “stand if you feel like it—don’t stand if you feel like it. Say the words if you want—[you] don’t have to say the words.”
  • Mrs. Pitzen also told her audience that she had taken down the American flag “because it made me uncomfortable.”
  • Dr. Williams insisted that “what this woman did needs to be known publicly.”
  • “I am just appalled by this public school teacher’s arrogance and anti-Americanism,” Dr. Williams went on to say. “She obviously believes in politically indoctrinating children within the public school system with Marxist Critical Theory.”
  • “She should be dismissed or transferred somewhere she can’t influence the hearts and minds of children.”
DR. WILLIAMS CALLS ON LOCAL PARENTS TO ACT:
  • “I urge all men and women of faith to band together and oppose this tyrannical evil of critical theories being promoted by ungodly men and women,” said Dr. Williams.
  • “Mrs. Pitzen is employed by the Newport-Mesa unified school district. So, the best thing local parents can do is attend a regular board meeting at Newport-Mesa Unified School District during which multiple people make public statements demanding her resignation.”
  • The next board meeting will take place on September 14, 2021, according to the district’s online Board Meeting Calendar and the contact information for all of the Newport-Mesa board members can be found here.
  • The Executive Assistant Confidential for Newport-Mesa, Rosy Amezcua, can be contacted at 714-424-5030 and ramezcua@nmusd.us.

Jon Fleetwood is Managing Editor for American Faith.

Texas Legislature Sends Sweeping GOP Voting Bill to Governor

The Texas Legislature sent a sweeping rewrite of the state’s election laws to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday, dealing a bruising defeat for Democrats after a monthslong, bitter fight over voting rights.

Abbott has said he will sign the changes into law, which could happen in the coming days.

Even the final vote did not escape a parting round of confrontation after Senate Republicans scuttled one the few areas of bipartisan agreement at the last minute: language that would have shielded voters with felony convictions from prosecution if they cast a ballot without knowing they were ineligible to vote. It had been included following backlash over the arrests of two Texas voters, both of whom are Black, which intensified criticism amid a broader fight over voting restrictions that opponents say disproportionately impact people of color.

The rest of the far-reaching legislation, spurred in part by former President Donald Trump’s claims of a stolen election, had set off a heated summer in Texas of walkouts by Democrats, Republicans threatening them with arrest, Abbott vetoing the paychecks of thousands of rank-and-file staffers when the bill failed to reach him sooner, and accusations of racism and voter suppression.

“The emotional reasons for not voting for it are that is creates hardships for people because of the color of their skin and their ethnicity, and I am part of that class of people,” said Democrat Garnet Coleman, a state representative whose return to the Capitol earlier this month helped end a 38-day standoff.

Texas will limit voting hours and empower partisan poll watchers under the nearly 75-page bill. It is largely similar to the one Democrats first walked out on 93 days ago, underscoring how Republicans, who have overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate, held their ground in the face of months of protest and escalating brinksmanship.

That acrimony is unlikely to end with Abbott’s signature.

The Texas Capitol is set to immediately shift into another charged fight over redrawn voting maps that could lock in Republican electoral advantages for the next decade. Texas added more than 4 million new residents since 2010, more than any other state, with people of color accounting for more than nine in every 10 new residents.

Democrats criticized the voting bill as an attempt to suppress the turnout of an ascendant and more diverse electorate as Republicans, who are used to racking up commanding electoral victories in America’s biggest red state, begin to lose ground.

Texas Republicans defended the bill in the same terms the GOP has used in more than a dozen other states that have also passed restrictive voting laws this year: calling the changes practical safeguards, while denying they are driven by Trump’s baseless claims that he lost reelection because of widespread voter fraud.

When the bill won final approval Tuesday in the Senate, holding the gavel on the dais was Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Days after the election last year, Patrick offered a $1 million reward in support of Trump’s claims of irregularities at the polls.

One provision in the bill had sought to add clarity that a person must have known he or she was voting illegally in order to face prosecution. But although it had buy-in from the House, it was rejected by Senate negotiators just as the bill was being finalized over the weekend.

Texas law prohibits people on parole, probation or supervised released from voting. But both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have expressed unease over the case of Crystal Mason, who was sentenced to five years in prison in 2018 for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 presidential election when she was on probation. She has said she was unaware that she was ineligible to cast a ballot at the time.

Her provisional vote wound up not counting, and her case is now on appeal.

After the full voting bill cleared, the House approved a resolution that “a person should not be criminally incarcerated for making an innocent mistake.” It passed 119-4.

“You should not be put in jail for five years under those circumstances,” Republican state Rep. Dustin Burrows said.

Texas already has some of the nation’s toughest election laws, and many of the most hotly contested changes now heading to Abbott are prohibitions on expanded voting options put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic in Texas’ largest county, which includes Houston and is a major source of Democratic votes.

Harris County last year offered 24-hour polling places and drive-thru voting, as well as tried sending mail-ballot applications to 2 million registered voters. All of that would now be outlawed with Abbott’s signature, and election officials who send mail-in ballots applications to voters who don’t request one could face criminal penalties.

Republicans said the tightened rules rein in powers that local elections officials never had in the first place, while accusing critics of exaggerating the impacts. They also emphasized that polls during two weeks of early voting everywhere in Texas must now be open for at least an extra hour, and that more counties must have polls open for at least 12 hours.

Mason’s illegal voting arrest is not the only one to draw criticism from Democrats and voting rights groups. In July, Hervis Rogers was arrested on charges of illegal voting because he cast a ballot while still on parole after waiting more than six hours in line during the 2020 presidential primary.

The cases drew national attention and angered critics who saw both as overzealous attempts by Republicans to look tough on rare cases of improper voting. The Brennan Center for Justice in 2017 ranked the risk of ballot fraud at 0.00004% to 0.0009%, based on studies of past elections.

20 US states sue Biden admin over guidance allowing biological males on women’s sports teams

A coalition of 20 US states has filed a lawsuit accusing the Biden administration of “changing law” by ordering schools to allow transgender girls, who are biologically male, to compete on female sports teams.

The lawsuit was filed on Tuesday by attorneys general from 20 Republican-run states, led by Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slattery. The suit claims that an executive order issued by Biden in January, along with two directives issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Department of Education, amounted to an unlawful attempt to bypass Congress and change federal law.

Biden’s executive order tasked every federal agency with reviewing their policies to “prevent and combat discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.” Following the order, the EEOC and Department of Education issued their own guidance, which in the  department’s case required schools and colleges to allow transgender women onto women’s sports teams.

Should a federally-funded school refuse to adhere to this, or refuse to allow a transgender student to use whatever bathroom they wish, the department’s guidance states that it can launch an investigation.

Biden’s order and the two memos that followed were based on an interpretation of Bostock v. Clayton County, a case that came before the Supreme Court last year. In a 6-3 verdict, the court ruled that employers cannot terminate employees “simply for being homosexual or transgender,” finding that the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s protections against “sex” discrimination also applied to “sexual orientation” and gender identity.

In the court’s ruling, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that “we do not purport to address bathrooms, locker rooms, or anything else of the kind.” Yet dissenting Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas predicted that the ruling would be used for just that, and the Biden administration has since proven them correct.

Dissent also came from Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who argued that retroactively reinterpreting the Civil Rights Act was not the job of the Supreme Court. “We are judges,” he wrote, “not Members of Congress. Our role is not to make or amend the law.”

Slattery echoed these words on Tuesday when speaking of the lawsuit. “This case is about two federal agencies changing law, which is Congress’ exclusive prerogative,” he said in a statement. “The agencies simply do not have that authority. But that has not stopped them from trying.”

The Democratic Party has thus far failed to pass the Equality Act, an ambitious piece of legislation that would actually write such protections for transgender people into the law. With the Senate split 50-50 between both parties, the act is unlikely to pass any time soon. In the meantime, any attempts to do so in piecemeal fashion, as in the case of the EEOC and Department of Education, will face Republican resistance and likely be decided by the courts.

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