The Vermont Principals’ Association has agreed to pay $566,000 to settle a 2023 lawsuit brought by Mid Vermont Christian School and two families who alleged the organization barred the school and its students from participating in sports competitions because of their religious beliefs.
The resolution comes more than three years after the Vermont Principals’ Association banned the school from interscholastic competitions because it chose to forfeit a girls’ basketball game rather than play against a team with a transgender player. The principals’ association said at the time that the school’s actions violated gender identity and nondiscrimination policies.
Alliance Defending Freedom, the influential conservative legal advocacy group that brought the suit, characterized the agreement as a “favorable partial settlement” in a legal battle that also names the Agency of Education as a defendant. The group amended its lawsuit in November to challenge the state’s education reform law, Act 73, claiming that it discriminates against religious schools by excluding them from receiving public dollars through the state’s tuitioning program. That litigation will continue to play out in court.
Steven Zakrzewski, a lawyer for the Vermont Principals’ Association, wrote in an email that the decision to settle was “based primarily on the costs and burdens imposed by ongoing litigation.”
The principals’ association “denies any wrongdoing,” Zakrzewski wrote. He noted that in June 2024, the U.S. District Court denied the Christian school’s request for a preliminary injunction. At the time, Judge Geoffrey Crawford ruled that Mid Vermont’s expulsion was “not motivated by animus against their religious beliefs” but because the school violated state policy that allows transgender students to participate on the team of their choice. A federal appeals court overturned Crawford’s decision last September.
Since that time, Mid Vermont Christian has been allowed to compete in interscholastic sports. Now that the suit is settled, Vermont Principals’ Association executive director Jay Nichols said on Tuesday, the school is permanently back in the game.
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