Updated at 4:39 p.m.
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.”
Judge Michael H. Park, writing for the court, wrote that the principals’ association “publicly castigated Mid Vermont — and religious schools generally — while the VPA rushed to judgment on whether and how to discipline the school.” Park said that the punishment they imposed on the school “was unprecedented, overbroad, and procedurally irregular.”
The court sent the case back to the federal district court for further proceedings.
Jay Nichols said Tuesday the Vermont Principals’ Association, its officers and employees “do not harbor any hostility towards religious viewpoints,” but declined to comment further, citing pending litigation.
A spokesperson for the state’s Agency of Education declined to comment, also citing pending litigation.
The school was represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a preeminent conservative Christian legal group that has had a growing presence in Vermont education and politics.
The group, in a press release, called the ruling a “victory for religious schools.”
David Cortman, senior counsel and vice president of U.S. litigation for the group, said in the press release that the appeals court was “right to uphold constitutional protections by guaranteeing the school can fully participate while still adhering to its religious beliefs.”
Chris Goodwin, the Mid Vermont Christian School girls’ basketball coach, said in the press release that the school strives “to exemplify biblical truth in and through everything we do.”
“We’re grateful for our legal team at Alliance Defending Freedom who helped us get back in the game,” he said.
Some advocacy organizations disagreed with the ruling. Amanda Rohdenburg, the senior director of advocacy and land stewardship at Outright Vermont, a statewide nonprofit advocacy group for LGBTQ+ people, called the court decision “yet another affront to Vermont’s core values, policies, and laws, which are clear on their commitments to anti-discrimination based on gender identity.”
“Allowing private schools to violate these policies is not only a setback in the progress we’ve made to support all youth, but it also fuels a dangerous collective delirium about kids simply trying to be themselves,” she said.
Monica Allard, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Vermont, cautioned in an emailed statement that while the ruling was “disappointing,” it was “important to underscore that the court did not rule against Vermont’s policy of including trans kids in school sports.”
“This decision does not impact the rights of trans kids to participate fully in school activities — or the responsibilities of schools to ensure that all students have equitable access to educational and extracurricular opportunities,” she said.
