Teacher who quit rather than affirm gender ideology gets $450K payout

A teacher in the US has received $450,000 after being pressured to resign for refusing to use students’ preferred names and pronouns.

Vivian Geraghty taught at Jackson Memorial Middle School in Massillon, Ohio. In 2022, two of her students requested she uses their preferred names and pronouns as they were ‘socially transitioning’. She refused on religious grounds despite the insistence of the headteacher.

The Jackson Local School District settled with the English teacher after she sued them for violating her first amendment rights.

Compelled speech

Geraghty met with headteacher Kacy Carter to find a way to resolve the issue, but reported that she was told “to put her beliefs aside as a public servant”.

She explained her religious convictions and that she “wouldn’t be comfortable using preferred names or pronouns because she would know what was behind it” but was told: to resign “effective today”.

Geraghty was then brought a laptop and ordered to write her resignation – just two hours after initially bringing the issue to the headteacher’s attention.

A ruling in August 2024 from the US District Court for the Northern District of Ohio concluded that the school’s “pronoun practice was not neutral,” and stated that a “rule requiring that teachers use pronouns that do not correspond to a student’s biological sex is compelled speech”.

Vindication

Logan Spena, legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom who represented Geraghty, said: “The school tried to force Vivian to accept and repeat the school’s viewpoint on issues that go to the foundation of morality and human identity, like what makes us male or female, by ordering her to personally participate in the social transition of her students.”

He stated: “No school official can force a teacher to set her religious beliefs aside in order to keep her job.”

“Vivian resisted this unconstitutional demand and explained that her Christian faith made her unable to participate in her students’ social transition, and she has received just vindication for taking this stand.”