A federal appeals court this week ruled in favor of Mid Vermont Christian School, which had violated the state Principals’ Association antidiscrimination and gender identity policies when it refused to allow its girls basketball team to play against another team with a transgender player.
Reports VT Digger:
A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled that the Mid Vermont Christian School must be allowed to participate in state athletics, two years after being banned for forfeiting against a team with a transgender player. The court returned the case to district court for further proceedings.
The ruling comes after several years of litigation by the pre-K-12 private Christian school in Quechee. The Vermont Principals’ Association barred the school from participating in state athletics after the school forfeited a girls’ playoff basketball game in February 2023 to avoid playing the Long Trail School, which had a transgender player on the team.
School officials at the time said they were concerned that playing against “a biological male jeopardizes the fairness of the game and the safety of the players,” and its head of school, Vicky Fogg, told Valley News that allowing “biological males to participate in women’s sports sets a bad precedent for the future of women’s sports in general.”
The Vermont Principals’ Association governs rules around school sports in Vermont, and said at the time that Mid Vermont Christian violated its anti-discrimination and gender identity policies.
The school, along with several parents and students, sued in federal court in 2023, seeking reinstatement of the school’s membership to the Vermont Principals’ Association.
According to Tuesday’s court ruling, Mid Vermont Christian School argued that “forcing girls to compete against the biological males would affirm that those males are females,” in violation of their religious beliefs.
U.S. District Court Judge Geoffrey Crawford in June 2024 denied the school’s request to be readmitted to the principals’ association.
But on Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed that decision and agreed with the school’s claims, writing that they were “likely to succeed” in showing that the association’s exclusion of the school “was not neutral because it displayed hostility toward the school’s religious beliefs.”
Read the complete VT Digger story here.
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