A Vermont Christian school is forging a continued legal battle after being kicked out of a state-sponsored athletic league — a move that purportedly puts its students at a profound disadvantage.
Mid Vermont Christian School, a K-12 institution in Quechee, Vermont, found itself in the headlines last year, after its girls’ basketball team declined to play against a team that included a biological male.
“The Mid Vermont Christian Girls Basketball team qualified for their state-sponsored sports league playoff tournament,” Ryan Tucker, an attorney at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), told CBN News. “And when they were looking at the seedings, they knew that the team that they were paired up against had a biological male who was professing to be female.”
School officials reportedly reached out in advance to the Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA), the body overseeing athletics in the state, to express safety and religious concerns surrounding competing against a biological male.
“They believe that boys are boys and girls are girls,” Tucker said. “And that’s the message that they instill and inculcate at their institution.”
But the VPA reportedly didn’t provide another option for Mid Vermont Christian School, leading officials to forfeit the Feb. 21, 2023, game.
“And, as a result, the state punished them by kicking them, not just obviously out of that tournament, but out of the sports association entirely,” Tucker said. “And so their girl sports season ended and they’ve been kicked out of that league.”
According to ABC News, the VPA’s executive council felt the school violated policies surrounding gender, race, and disability awareness and could, thus, no longer take part.
The attorney said the school’s relationship with the athletic body went back more than 25 years, describing the previous situation between the two parties as one that comprised a “great history” without issue.
“Their kids were able to participate in athletic events for … obviously, a couple of decades, almost three decades,” Tucker said. “And, so, it’s quite unfortunate that … the state decided to oust them, to take this ridiculous act, and it’s really put the school in peril.”
Tucker said the school attempted to remedy the situation prior to the game, before the forfeiture, and even after they were kicked out.
“They went back to the VPA … several times, asking them to reconsider and to think through what they’ve done before they went and filed a federal lawsuit,” he said.
Tucker’s interview with CBN News comes as Mid Vermont Christian School is appealing. That appeal follows U.S. District Court Judge Geoffrey Crawford denying a request from the school, students, and parents that they be readmitted to the VPA.
Crawford felt the state likely wasn’t in violation of Mid Vermont Christian School’s First Amendment rights, considering its policies surrounding these issues are the same for every academic institution that participates, ABC News reported.
ADF’s brief last week with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, though, challenged “Vermont officials for expelling the Christian school and its students from participating in the state’s athletics association because of their religious beliefs.”
Tucker said the case is important not only to Mid Vermont Christian School but to the nation more broadly.
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“I think it’s a threat nationwide as well,” he said of the VPA’s banning of the Christian school. “As these religious schools face an ever-increasing amount of situations like this.”
It should be noted that Mid Vermont Christian School would potentially be permitted back into the league if it agreed to abide by its rules surrounding transgender players.
But the institution, being Christian in nature, supports a biblical view of marriage and gender and, according to Tucker, “won’t be complicit in propagating a falsity.”
“The school can’t facilitate events that undermine its beliefs about sex and gender,” he said. “And other schools across the U.S. feel likewise.”
ADF claims VPA has traditionally not allowed boys to play on girls’ sports teams, but said a recently-adopted policy allows males who identify as girls to take part.
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