Attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed an opening brief on behalf of Mid Vermont Christian School and one of its families after Vermont officials banned students from participating in the state’s athletic association.
Last year, the Christian school was removed from the athletic association after it forfeited a girls’ basketball game. The opposing school’s basketball team featured a biological male player identifying as a female.
ADF Senior Counsel Ryan Tucker said in a statement, “No religious school or their students and parents should be denied equal access to publicly available benefits simply for holding to their religious beliefs.”
He said the Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA) “took the drastic step of permanently expelling Mid Vermont and its students from all middle-school and high-school sporting events simply because Mid Vermont forfeited a single girls’ basketball game to avoid violating the school’s religious beliefs. And to justify its actions, the VPA used discretionary policies applied on a ‘case-by-case basis’ to do so.”
This “blatant act of discrimination and hostility toward Mid Vermont’s beliefs violates the First Amendment,” Tucker explained. “We are urging the court to uphold constitutional protections by guaranteeing the school can fully participate while still adhering to its religious beliefs.”
ABC News reported that the Vermont Principals’ Association committee “identified the actions of Mid Vermont in ‘stigmatiz(ing) a transgender student who had every right to play’ as the basis for the discipline,” VPA said, quoting a judge.
According to the brief filed by ADF, the VPA “expelled Mid Vermont for forfeiting a game to avoid violating its religious beliefs by competing against a girls’ basketball team allowing a male to compete as a girl.”
The VPA “cannot wield such unbridled discretion,” nor can it exclude “an otherwise eligible religious school from a public benefit solely because of its religious exercise,” the brief says.
