Ohio School District Pays $450K Settlement to Middle School Teacher Who Refused to Use Transgender Students’ Chosen Pronouns

An Ohio school district has paid a middle school teacher a $450,000 settlement after she was forced to resign for refusing to use a “transgender” student’s chosen pronouns.

The teacher, Vivian Geraghty, sued the Jackson Local School District for violating her freedom of speech.

According to the Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented Geraghty, the district required teachers to “personally participate in the ‘social transition’ of students who express a gender identity inconsistent with their sex by using the students’ preferred names and pronouns.”

The lawsuit claimed that on August 22, 2022, a school counselor informed Geraghty and other teachers that they must use the chosen pronouns of two students.

On August 26, Geraghty went to Principal Kacy Carter to find out if there was some sort of compromise that could be made so that she would not have to violate her deeply held beliefs.

Subsequently, the teacher was informed that if she could not “set her religious convictions aside,” she should resign.

In a press release, the organization said, “Geraghty taught English at Jackson Memorial Middle School in Massillon until district officials demanded her resignation because she wanted to refrain from speaking in a way that would violate her religious beliefs. Geraghty’s sincerely held religious beliefs and scientific understanding govern her view that a person is male or female based on sex, not personal identity, and participating in a student’s social transition violates those beliefs by forcing her to communicate messages she believes are untrue and harmful to the student.”

“No school official can force a teacher to set her religious beliefs aside in order to keep her job,” said ADF Legal Counsel Logan Spena.

Spena continued, “The school tried to force Vivian to accept and repeat the school’s viewpoint on issues that go to the foundation of morality and human identity, like what makes us male or female, by ordering her to personally participate in the social transition of her students.”

“The First Amendment prohibits that abuse of power, and Jackson Local School District officials have learned that comes at a steep cost. Vivian resisted this unconstitutional demand and explained that her Christian faith made her unable to participate in her students’ social transition, and she has received just vindication for taking this stand.”

“ADF attorneys recently favorably settled two similar cases in Virginia on behalf of teacher Peter Vlaming, who received $575,000 in his settlement, as well as teachers Deborah Figliola, Kristine Marsh, and Laura Nelson, who are receiving religious accommodations as district employees,” the press release noted.

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