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Court to Decide If Teacher Has Right to Refuse to Call Girl a Boy? Virginia’s Supreme Court May Decide

A Virginia teacher was fired for refusing to call a girl a boy. Now, the state’s Supreme Court has the opportunity to decide whether a local school board violated the teacher’s legal rights.

A lawyer for French teacher Peter Vlaming asked Tuesday that the Virginia Supreme Court take up the case, Vlaming v. West Point School Board. 

“No government can force any Virginian to express messages that violate their core beliefs,” Chris Schandevel told The Daily Signal after arguing for Vlaming before Virginia’s highest court.

Schandevel, a lawyer with the Christian legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom, asked the court “to reinstate the lawsuit that [Vlaming] filed in state trial court,” which dismissed the case without explanation last August.  

As previously reported by The Daily Signal, the West Point School Board fired Vlaming in December 2018 after he declined to use male pronouns to refer to a female student who identified as a transgender male. 

Almost a year later, Vlaming filed a lawsuit against the West Point School Board for breach of contract, arguing that the body violated his rights under the Virginia Constitution. 

“Mr. Vlaming was not fired for something he said; he was fired for something that he could not say based on his religious beliefs,” Schandevel argued Tuesday. 

“This is a case about compelled speech,” he said. 

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