In a victory for “religious freedom” activists and the anti-trans presidential administration, a federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered Vermont’s school sports league to allow a Christian academy to compete, two years after it was expelled from the league for forfeiting a basketball game rather than play a team with a transgender athlete.

Alliance Defending Freedom – the anti-LGBTQ+ conservative Christian legal group that represented Mid Vermont Christian School in the case and is behind “religious freedom” challenges in several other states – celebrated the court’s order.

Related

Anti-trans school sues state for religious discrimination after it forfeited basketball game

“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,” said ADF senior counsel David Cortman, who argued the case for the plaintiffs.

Mid Vermont, a K-12 private religious school, had claimed that playing against a transgender student-athlete would have violated its belief that “sex is God-given and immutable and that God created each of us either male or female.”

Never Miss a Beat

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

The Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA), which governs middle and high school sports in the state, argued that playing another team does not involve adopting its views.

The three judges on the New York-based US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, all of whom were appointed by either the current president or George W. Bush, agreed with the plaintiffs and overturned an earlier ruling by a federal district judge in Vermont that upheld the league’s action, The Boston Globe reported.

The case stems from a high school basketball tournament in February 2023, when the Mid Vermont girls’ basketball team was scheduled to play the Long Trail School. Long Trails’ roster included a transgender girl.

The Christian academy called on the VPA to bar the trans student athlete from playing, but the league said doing so would violate its nondiscrimination policies and Vermont law. In response, the Christian academy forfeited the game, saying, “Playing against an opponent with a biological male jeopardizes the fairness of the game and the safety of our players.” 

Three weeks later, Mid Vermont was expelled from the league and denied participation in sports and other extracurricular activities in the state, including spelling bees and debate competitions.

“This case has nothing to do with beliefs,” a league committee wrote at the time. “It has everything to do with actions and their impact on transgender students.”

It was league leader Jay Nichols’ views on Mid Vermont’s actions, however, that drew the most attention from the appeals court judges.

“Thank goodness the student in question didn’t attend that religious school,” Nichols told a state legislative committee shortly after Mid Vermont’s forfeiture. “But what if they did? Would we be okay with that blatant discrimination under the guise of religious freedom?”

The court said that testimony indicated the league didn’t adjudicate Mid Vermont’s case in a “neutral” manner.

“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 wrote, adding that “the punishment imposed was unprecedented, overbroad and procedurally irregular.”

The court’s ruling is a preliminary decision that allows Mid Vermont to compete while an underlying lawsuit makes its way through the courts. 

The Vermont case is one of several that are testing the constitutionality of state laws and school policies governing trans student-athletes’ participation in sports. The US Supreme Court will address those questions when it reviews bans on trans student-athletes enacted in Idaho and West Virginia, currently blocked by lower courts. The states are two among 27 with similar laws banning trans students from participating in school sports.

The sports league’s director, Nichols, disputed the judges’ characterization of his organization’s decision to expel Mid Vermont as discriminatory and based on religious animus.

“There’s nobody at the VPA that has any animosity toward any religion,” said Nichols, who calls himself a Christian. “None of our officers, none of our members, or anyone employed by the VPA.”

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.