When David Bloch heard two members of his high-school snowboarding team were engaged in a debate earlier this year over biological boys competing against girls, he joined the conversation, he said, to ensure that it didn’t turn into a bigger problem.

In Bloch’s account, a male team member was arguing that allowing biological boys to compete against girls wasn’t fair. A female team member accused her teammate of being transphobic.

“It was a cloudy conversation,” Bloch, the Vermont team’s longtime coach, said of that debate on February 8. He weighed in, he told National Review, to provide an “umbrella.”

Bloch said he wanted both students to feel “heard.” He agreed with the female snowboarder that there is a “spectrum” of gender expression — more feminine males and more masculine females. But the male snowboarder also had a point: biological males have physical characteristics that tend to give them competitive advantages in sports.

They never specifically addressed the transgender snowboarder on the team they were competing against that day, Bloch said. He assumed that was the end of it.

But the next day, Bloch was fired from his Woodstock Union High School coaching job. District leaders say that conversation with his team members violated the school board’s anti-bullying policy and the Vermont Principals’ Association Athletics Policy. Bloch, they alleged, “made reference to [a] student in a manner that questioned the legitimacy and appropriateness of the student competing on the girls’ team to members of the WUHS snowboard team.”

Bloch is now fighting to be reinstated. Over the summer, Bloch and his lawyers with Alliance Defending Freedom filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the district and the superintendent violated his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

They retaliated against Bloch, the lawsuit says, because his “respectful expression of his beliefs contradicted the prevailing orthodoxy” of the defendants. The lawsuit, which also targets the state’s interim education secretary and the executive director of the state’s principal’s association, is also challenging Vermont’s anti-bullying policies for being so vague and overly broad that even respectful speech on controversial matters can be deemed harassment.

“The over-broad terms of this policy allow the subjective offense of listeners to justify punishment, and that violates the First Amendment,” said Mathew Hoffmann, an ADF lawyer.

A preliminary injunction hearing is slated for Monday. Bloch’s lawyers are hoping to get him reinstated to his coaching position while the court case plays out.

Sherry Sousa, the superintendent of the school district who fired Bloch, declined in an email to discuss the details of the case with National Review. “We are confident that the District acted properly. We expect that the court will agree that there was not a violation of any rights,” wrote Sousa, who, according to the lawsuit, has a transgender child.

Bloch founded Woodstock Union High’s snowboard team in 2011, after some parents asked him to, but also because of his “love of the sport” and his “love of the kids,” he said. He’s continued coaching even though he no longer has a child on the team.

In more than a decade at the team’s helm, he’s coached at least three individual state champions, according to the lawsuit.

Bloch, who is Catholic, said he never saw his coaching position as a vehicle for proselytizing his religious, political, or cultural beliefs. “Never,” he said. “Didn’t even cross my mind.”

According to the lawsuit, Bloch, who works in real estate, has never had any other complaints or received any other discipline as a coach. And he said he previously had a “cordial and friendly” relationship with Sousa, whose child he once coached.

The debate that flared up between two members of Bloch’s team in February occurred as the Woodstock Union team was preparing to compete against a team that has a transgender athlete who competes against girls.

Bloch said that while that particular athlete never came up in his short conversation with his team members — Bloch’s involvement in the conversation “lasted less than three minutes,” according to the lawsuit — he acknowledged it had been a “topic of conversation with parents and kids throughout the season.” Some didn’t think it was fair the transgender athlete was allowed to compete against girls, Bloch said.

“It’s a biological boy competing as a girl,” he said. “The girls work hard, and the biological boy shows up and beats them.”

Bloch said he left the conversation with his athletes believing that both had felt heard. The female athlete who had accused her teammate of being transphobic, thanked Bloch for a “good conversation,” the lawsuit says. “I know she left that conversation happy,” Bloch said.

At one point during the competition that day, Bloch said, he helped the transgender athlete get into a snowboard. The two teams shared a bus ride home with no troubles, the lawsuit says.

“I have nothing against these kids,” Bloch said. “I have nothing but compassion.”

The next day, Bloch was told by the athletic director that he’d received a complaint about his conversation with his team members. Bloch said he doesn’t know who lodged the complaint. Around 3 p.m. he was called into a meeting with Sousa expecting her to ask questions. Instead, she slid a document across her desk, a notice of Bloch’s “immediate termination.”

Sousa said little, Bloch said, other than that she’d heard from “several parents and students.” Bloch said that from a large team text exchange he has, he doesn’t believe that is true.

Sousa didn’t bring up her transgender child during his firing, or say that the issue struck a particular nerve with her, but it was clear that she wasn’t happy, Bloch said.

“Her body position said it was important to her, but verbally she said nothing,” Bloch said.

In addition to retaliating against Bloch for his speech and engaging in viewpoint discrimination, the lawsuit also alleges that the district violated its own policies when it fired Bloch — Sousa admitted the district’s investigation was not complete when Bloch was fired, he was never informed of the allegations or the investigation before he was fired, he wasn’t provided any notice that he was going to be fired, he wasn’t given an opportunity to present witnesses or evidence, and he wasn’t informed of his right to appeal the firing.

The district also hasn’t provided Bloch with a copy of the investigative report, the lawsuit says.

When he was talking to his team members about transgender athletes, Bloch said, he had a “middle-of-the-line position” on the issue.

“There’s no training. There’s no how to handle this,” Bloch said. “The teachers get it. The coaches don’t. We’re basically volunteers. I don’t do it for the money.”

Bloch said his firing shocked the community, which he called “a fairly wealthy area, pretty liberal.” A lot of people didn’t think that kind of culture-war firing could happen there, he said.

Still, Bloch said that while he’s “terribly frustrated” with being fired, he’s been heartened by the support he’s received from a wide range of people in the community.

“Every single person, people that I thought were going to be angry, who have LGBTQ picnics in their backyard, they even came out in my support,” he said. “The town is informed now. And my reputation around town is pretty good. And they know I’m a caring, loving individual, and for this to happen, it’s a good wakeup call for everyone.”

Bloch said that “no one should lose their job for speaking the truth,” adding that it is important for others in similar positions to stand up and fight back, “or this is never going to change.”

Bloch said he “100 percent” wants to be return as Woodstock Union High’s snowboard coach.

“And if they don’t let me come back,” he said, “they didn’t say I couldn’t join the school board and bring ten of my friends.”