The Loudoun County school board will no longer force staff to use students’ preferred pronouns after teachers sued over the Northern Virginia school district’s transgender policy, a court ruled on Thursday.
In a free speech victory for several teachers who sued, the Loudoun County Circuit Court officially recognized that Loudoun County Public Schools no longer requires teachers to use pronouns inconsistent with students’ biological sex.
The court noted that “on its face, [the transgender policy] does not require teachers or other staff to use a pronoun to refer to a person that a teacher believes is inconsistent with the person’s sex. Instead, [the policy] permits staff to refrain from using any pronouns.”
The transgender policy, which was adopted in 2021, allows “gender-expansive or transgender students” to choose their names and pronouns. Originally, officials stated that it required teachers to use them as well.
“Staff or students who intentionally and persistently refuse to respect a student’s gender identity by using the wrong name and gender pronoun are in violation of this policy,” the policy reads.
However, the Loudoun County school board backed down on requiring teachers to use pronouns after Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys won a victory on the same issue for another high school teacher, Peter Vlaming, in a different Virginia school district.
Thursday’s court ruling affirms the school board’s new interpretation of its policy.
This is the second victory for Loudoun County teachers in this case.
In May 2021, physical education teacher Tanner Cross spoke at a school board meeting and expressed his concerns that the new transgender policy would violate teachers and parents’ rights and be harmful to students.
A few days later, Cross was suspended by Leesburg Elementary School.
He ultimately got his job back when Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys sued on his behalf, and the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that his constitutional rights had likely been violated.
“Unfortunately, thereafter … the school board adopted [the transgender policy] without making any revisions or addressing any of the concerns that Tanner or the other parents and teachers addressed,” Tyson Langhofer, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, told The Daily Wire.
Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys added two more teachers to the lawsuit against the policy — Smart’s Mill Middle School English teacher Kim Wright and Loudoun County High School history teacher Monica Gill.
“Thankfully, now after several years of litigation, the school has agreed that its policy does not and cannot compel teachers to use pronouns that students request which are inconsistent with the student’s sex,” Langhofer said.
Gill, one of the plaintiffs celebrating Thursday’s ruling, has taught in Loudoun County for nearly 25 years.
“I treasure all my students, regardless of whether they identify as the opposite sex,” Gill said in a statement to The Daily Wire.
However, the transgender policy “threatened to make me ignore biological reality and lie to my students,” Gill said.
“This policy jeopardized the dignity of all students,” she said. “I’m pleased that the school district has now honored my constitutionally protected freedom to speak to my students in love and truth.”
Loudoun County has been a flash point in the national controversy over transgender ideology in schools, starting with The Daily Wire’s bombshell 2021 investigation into a father’s claim that the school district covered up the rape of his daughter by a male student in a skirt in the girls’ school bathroom.
“For many, many years, Loudoun County, along with many other school boards across the country, have acted as if they control, that they’re ultimately responsible for the education of the children rather than parents,” attorney Langhofer said.
“They’ve also acted as if they get to control all of teachers’ speech and that they can punish teachers for disagreeing with the school on really important topics such as human sexuality and gender identity,” he said.
“So this ruling is a great victory for teachers who don’t want to express messages that they think are untrue or are harmful to students and also don’t want to mislead parents about how their schools are treating the students at school,” the attorney said.