Loudon County teacher wins case against School Board

Source VPAP/Washington Post

According to an article in Wednesday’s Washington Post, a Virginia judge said Tuesday that a Loudoun County teacher suspended for refusing to address transgender students with their preferred names and pronouns should return to work immediately.

In a seven-page ruling, 20th Circuit Judge James E. Plowman Jr. sharply rebuked the Loudoun County Public Schools system for its treatment of the teacher, Tanner Cross. Plowman called Loudoun’s attempts to discipline Cross “an unconstitutional action . . . which has silenced others from speaking publicly on the issue.”

Per Virginia law, the school system can petition for a review of the judge’s ruling within 15 days.

School officials had barred Cross from performing his job as a physical education instructor at Leesburg Elementary School — and from setting foot on campus — after he declared at a late-May school board meeting that he would never “affirm that a biological boy can be a girl, and vice versa.” Cross said his Christian faith and determination to always tell the truth meant he could not use a transgender child’s selected name and pronoun if it did not agree with their biological sex as determined at birth.