The Rockingham County Circuit Court will hold a hearing on Tuesday Dec 10th in Figliola v. The School Board of the City of Harrisonburg after local teachers filed a brief in October asking the court to respect their constitutionally protected right to do their job in accordance with their religious beliefs.
Deborah Figliola, Kristine Marsh, and Laura Nelson are employed by the Harrisonburg City School Board and filed a lawsuit in June 2022 challenging the board’s actions as violations of the Virginia Constitution’s Free Speech Clause, the Virginia Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and other legal provisions by compelling them to speak a message to which they object.
“The Virginia Supreme Court has affirmed that school boards may not compel a teacher, over her objection, to refer to a student by pronouns that don’t correspond with the student’s sex,” said ADF Senior Counsel Kate Anderson, director of the ADF Center for Parental Rights, who will be arguing before the court. “Yet the Harrisonburg City School Board has been doing just that. It has tried to force Deb, Kris, and Laura, teachers whom we represent in this case, to violate their religious beliefs by compelling them to use pronouns inconsistent with students’ sex and prohibiting them from notifying parents or seeking their consent. The Virginia Constitution and other laws contain robust free-speech and free-exercise protections for public employees and allow teachers to do their jobs. Because of those protections, we urge the court to rule for our clients.”
In a series of on-the-job trainings related to the school board’s nondiscrimination policy, the board directed teachers to “immediately implement” these practices: (1) to ask students’ “preferred” names and pronouns; (2) to always use them, even when contrary to a student’s sex; and, (3) to do so without notifying parents or seeking their consent. And the nondiscrimination policy threatens discipline—including termination—for noncompliance.
In a similar case litigated by ADF attorneys, the West Point School Board in Virginia agreed to pay $575,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees to settle a lawsuit brought by a former high school teacher who was fired for avoiding the use of pronouns to refer to one of his students.
The favorable settlement followed the Virginia Supreme Court’s landmark decision affirming that the Virginia Constitution contains robust free speech and free exercise protections for public employees.
