The Virginia Supreme Court revived a lawsuit filed by a school teacher who was fired for refusing to use the new pronouns of a student who claimed transgender identity.

Peter Vlaming filed the original lawsuit after his 2018 ouster, but a judge threw it out before hearing any evidence. The Old Dominion's high court overturned that opinion, ruling the case should proceed to trial.

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Vlaming, who was a French teacher at West Point High School in a district outside Richmond, said in his lawsuit that he attempted to use the biologically female student's masculine name to accommodate the person while avoiding the use of pronouns altogether, including for the entire class.

The school district, the student in question, and the student's parents told Vlaming he was required to use male pronouns when referring to the female student, which the teacher refused, saying he has "sincerely held religious and philosophical” beliefs that “each person’s sex is biologically fixed and cannot be changed.” The school district, however, said Vlaming violated its anti-discrimination policy.

Vlaming argued that he would be lying if he used the student's new pronouns. Vlaming is represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal advocacy group whose attorney Christopher Schandevel said the teacher was fired "for something that he couldn’t say," adding that "this is a case about compelled speech."

A unanimous seven-justice court said two of the claims made by Vlaming could move forward to trial, including his claim of a violation of his right to exercise religion freely under the Virginia Constitution and his breach of contract claim.

However, some of the state Supreme Court justices were divided on the scope of the claims.

The Virginia Constitution “seeks to protect diversity of thought, diversity of speech, diversity of religion, and diversity of opinion," Justice D. Arthur Kelsey wrote in the four-person majority opinion. “Absent a truly compelling reason for doing so, no government committed to these principles can lawfully coerce its citizens into pledging verbal allegiance to ideological views that violate their sincerely held religious beliefs."

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Justice Thomas Mann was joined by two other justices in a dissent, in which he wrote that Kelsey's majority opinion on the free exercise claim was too broad because it “establishes a sweeping super scrutiny standard with the potential to shield any person’s objection to practically any policy or law by claiming a religious justification for their failure to follow either.”

ADF has brought six similar lawsuits, three in Virginia, with others in Kansas, Ohio, and Indiana.