CV NEWS FEED // Vermont recently banned Mid Vermont Christian School students from participating in the state’s tuition program and sports league because of the school’s religious beliefs on sexuality and gender.
Alliance Defending Freedom, a non-profit legal organization, represented Mid Vermont Christian and two families in a federal lawsuit filed on November 21.
“The State is entitled to its own views, but it is not entitled, nor is it constitutional, to force private, religious schools across the state to follow that orthodoxy as a condition to participating in Vermont’s tuitioning program and the State’s athletic association,” read the complaint filed by the ADF.
Mid Vermont Christian is a faith-based Pre-K through 12th grade school in Quechee, an unincorporated village in the town of Hartford.
The state’s Agency of Education requires private, religious schools like Mid Vermont Christian to embrace the state’s interpretation of sexuality and gender to participate in sports and the tuition program. ADF argued that this violates the First Amendment rights of the school and its students and families because it prevents them from practicing their religious beliefs on sexuality and gender.
“Vermont has an infamous record of discriminating against religious schools and families, whether it be withholding generally available public funding or denying them membership in the state’s sports league because they hold religious beliefs that differ from the state’s preferred views,” said ADF Senior Counsel Ryan Tucker, director of the ADF Center for Christian Ministries, in a press release. He continued:
The state’s unlawful exclusion of Mid Vermont Christian from participating in the tuition program and athletic association is the latest example of state officials trampling on constitutionally protected rights.
Tucker stated that Vermont “continues its blatant discrimination against religious schools despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Carson v. Makin that the government cannot exclude families from public benefits just because they choose religious education for their children.”
Vermont’s Agency of Education refused to designate Mid Vermont Christian as an approved independent school due to its religious beliefs. This decision prevents its students from participating in Vermont’s Town Tuitioning program, which funds private school tuition for students in districts that do not have public high schools. The closest school to Mid Vermont is over an hour away, according to the ADF complaint.
Lack of designation as an independent school has other negative consequences for students, such as preventing them from participating in Dual Enrollment, early college, and fast forward programs.
The Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA) also removed Mid Vermont Christian from its athletic association for its religious practices. Though the VPA has historically prevented boys from playing on girls’ sports teams, it recently demanded that Mid Vermont follow its new policy allowing biological males to compete in girls’ sports. The removal followed Mid Vermont Christian’s decision to forfeit a girls’ high school basketball game against a team with a male athlete.
“Now, despite 28 years of prior participation in the league, the school cannot compete in any VPA athletics, effectively blacklisting the school from all state-sponsored events in the state, including VPA spring sports for which schools are still creating schedules,” read the ADF press release.
The VPA is going so far as to exclude Mid Vermont Christian and its students from participating in co-ed academic competitions like the Geo-Bee, Science and Math Fair, and Debate and Forensics League, all because the school believes biological differences between boys and girls matter.
“The students who choose to attend Mid Vermont Christian are currently losing out on valuable tuition reimbursement and being excluded from playing competitive sports and participating in academic competitions, including the Goodwin and Slarve children, whom we represent in this case,” said ADF Legal Counsel Jake Reed.
Vermont, through its education agency and sports association, has engaged in unconstitutional discrimination by requiring a Christian school and its students to surrender their religious beliefs and practices in order to receive public funds and compete in sports.
This is not the first time Vermont has denied tuition benefits for families sending their children to religious schools. In December 2022, ADF favorably settled two lawsuits on behalf of several families and the Diocese of Burlington, where Vermont agreed to give tuition benefits without discrimination.
ADF attorneys filed the current lawsuit, Mid Vermont Christian School v. Bouchey in the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont.