Indiana community settles with transphobic teacher for $650,000

An Indiana school district will pay a teacher $650,000 after he lost his job for refusing to call a transgender student by their name.

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Orchestra teacher John Kluge sued the Brownsburg Community School Corporation after being fired in 2018 for refusing to comply with the district’s preferred name policy, according to the Indianapolis Star. Kluge had refused to comply with a policy, first implemented in 2017, that required teachers to use students’ names in an official school database. The database included preferred names for transgender students.

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Initially, Kluge referred to all students by last name, but when the district said he needed to use their first names, he resigned rather than show that basic level of respect. GLAAD stresses the importance of simply respecting the pronouns people ask one to use and using them as requested, just as a person would strive to pronounce someone’s name correctly.

The conservative Alliance Defending Freedom took up Kluge’s cause and negotiated the six-figure settlement between the music teacher and his former employer. “After almost five and a half years, common sense has prevailed at Brownsburg,” ADF Senior Counsel and Vice President of U.S. Litigation David Cortman said in a statement.

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“This settlement confirms what the law has always said: Public schools cannot force teachers to violate their religious beliefs. Title VII requires employers to accommodate their employees’ religious beliefs and practices. When they fail to do so—or worse, announce that they will grant no religious accommodations, as Brownsburg did—they can be held accountable. We hope this settlement shows teachers that they do not have to bow the knee to ideological mandates that violate their religious beliefs. And schools should learn that refusing to accommodate religious employees can be illegal and expensive.”

The ADF claims that Kluge’s case was bolstered after a U.S. Supreme Court decision, Groff v. DeJoy, affirmed that employers must accommodate workers’ religious practices.

Kluge no longer works in public education, according to the Star.