Christian school banned from sporting events for refusing to compete against trans athlete awarded $566K settlement

A Christian school that was denied the opportunity to participate in sporting events because its girls’ basketball team refused to compete against an opposing team with a male player has received a six-figure settlement. 

In a statement Wednesday, the conservative nonprofit legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom announced that the Vermont Principals’ Association has agreed to pay $566,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees to Mid Vermont Christian School to partially resolve a lawsuit brought after the school was expelled from state-sponsored sports in 2023 because it forfeited a girls’ basketball game due to the presence of a trans-identified male athlete on the opposing team. 

“The government cannot punish religious schools — and the families they serve — by permanently kicking them out of state-sponsored sports simply because the state disagrees with their religious beliefs,” said ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman. “For more than two years, state officials denied Mid Vermont Christian School a public benefit available to all other schools in Vermont just because it stood by the widely held, biblical belief that boys and girls are different. There’s a price to pay for violating constitutional rights for Christian schools and students.” 

Chris Goodwin, the girls’ basketball coach at Mid Vermont Christian School and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, reacted to the settlement by expressing gratitude to “our legal team at Alliance Defending Freedom who helped us get back in the game.”

“As a coach, I always want my team to play in fair and safe competitions,” Goodwin said. “As a dad, I want my daughter to know that she should always stand up for her beliefs and should never be punished for that decision.” 

“I never thought I would be in court for simply adhering to my Christian and commonsense belief that boys and girls are different,” he added.

The $566,000 settlement follows a September ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ordering the Vermont Principals’ Association, which oversees extracurricular activities in the state, to reinstate Mid Vermont Christian School.

While Mid Vermont Christian School has received a six-figure settlement and the claims against Vermont Principals’ Association Executive Director Jay Nichols have been dismissed, the school’s litigation against the state of Vermont continues over its exclusion from the state’s Town Tuitioning and Dual Enrollment Program that enables students residing in areas without a public high school to attend private schools free of charge.

The original 2023 lawsuit claims that the school was excluded “because of its religious beliefs about sexuality and gender.” 

Vermont’s ongoing refusal to include Mid Vermont Christian School in its Town Tuitioning and Dual Enrollment program comes despite a 2021 decision from the Second Circuit ruling that the state’s exclusion of religious schools from the program is unconstitutional.

The following year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Carson v. Makin that Maine’s exclusion of religious schools from a similar program violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.