Despite Vermont Governor Phil Scott’s support for transgender student athletes — along with that of the Vermont Principals Association and other leading groups and legislators in the state — a powerful, Arizona-based Christian law firm is filing a federal lawsuit on behalf of Mid Vermont Christian Academy, which refused to let its students play against schools with transgender athletes on their teams.
Reports Kevin Cullen in the Boston Globe:
Last year, Mid Vermont Christian School’s girls basketball coach Chris Goodwin worried about his players going up against an imposing player from their opponent in the state tournament.
The Long Trail School player was so good at protecting the basket and blocking shots that her teammates nicknamed her “Not In My House.”
At some point, Goodwin learned that the imposing defender was transgender, a fact that chafed against the school’s conservative Christian beliefs. After consulting the school’s administrators and his players, Goodwin said, everyone at Mid Vermont was in agreement: The girls team would not play against a player they believed to be a boy.
Mid Vermont, a small school of about 100 students, forfeited the game, exiting the tournament and ending their season without taking a shot.
The decision triggered sanctions from the agency that oversees the state’s interscholastic sports, which said the refusal to compete violated Vermont’s nondiscrimination and public accommodation laws. It banned the school from all sports and academic competitions.
The school, firing back, has now teamed up with a powerful Christian law firm, the Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom, to bring a suit in federal district court in Vermont that some say could end up before the US Supreme Court. Pitting the constitutional right to freedom of religious expression against state antidiscrimination laws, the case could have national implications and potentially trigger more religious challenges to state antidiscrimination laws, some legal experts said.
Read the complete Boston Globe story here.
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