Teacher says she lost her job after refusing to use student’s pronouns at Ohio school
An Ohio teacher lost her job after refusing to use the pronouns of two students due to her religious beliefs, according to a lawsuit.
The lawsuit, filed Dec. 12, claims the Jackson Local School District Board of Education and several administrators violated Vivian Geraghty’s rights to free speech and religion by demanding she refer to students by pronouns that don’t match with their genders assigned at birth — or else her employment would be terminated.
Geraghty began teaching at Jackson Memorial Middle School in 2020, the lawsuit said. At the beginning of the 2022 school year, she learned two of her students were asking to be called by different names and pronouns as part of their “social transition” to different genders.
She felt that participating in this “social transition” would be a violation of her Christian beliefs, and would cause psychological damage to the students in question, the lawsuit said.
Geraghty met with administrators at the school and asked if she could call the students by their last names instead, but they responded that, as a public servant, Geraghty should put her personal beliefs aside, the lawsuit said.
It is district policy for “most teachers” to call students by the pronouns they identify with, the lawsuit said.
When it became clear she wasn’t going to refer to the students with those pronouns, Geraghty said she was forced to resign.
“Unequivocally and unapologetically, I will not do so,” she wrote in a letter of resignation. “There are many convictions that I hold that would never be made known in my classroom as I have a responsibility to teach (English Language Arts) content, not religion. However, there are lines that I will not cross, as they would violate my conscience and my God.”
No attorneys were listed on behalf of the school board or administrators, but the district said it is aware of the lawsuit and has taken action.
“This district always will strive to provide a safe, comfortable environment for all of our nearly 6,000 students in which to learn,” a district spokesperson said in a statement to McClatchy News. “We have engaged legal counsel and we will have no further comment on pending litigation.”
In addition to violating her rights, Geraghty’s attorneys say her dismissal has made it difficult — “if not impossible” — for her to be hired as a public school teacher elsewhere in the state of Ohio.
Her team is seeking, among other things, financial compensation and her reinstatement as a teacher, the lawsuit says.
The number of openly LGBTQ Americans has grown significantly among the Millennial and Gen Z generations, with an increasing number of people identifying as a different gender, or gender fluid or neutral.
A 2022 Pew Research Center poll found around 5% of those aged 18 to 29 identify as transgender or nonbinary, compared to .3% of those 50 or older who said the same. Overall, 1.6% of respondents identified as something other than the gender they were assigned at birth.
Pronouns such as she/her, he/him and they/them can be supportive and affirming, experts say, while misgendering someone — or referring to someone with pronouns they don’t identify with — can make them feel isolated and disrespected.
Nearly 20% of transgender and nonbinary teens reported attempting suicide, according to a 2022 survey from the Trevor Project, a nonprofit that focuses on suicide prevention among LGBTQ youth. But those who had an “affirming” school environment were less likely to attempt suicide.
Still, the nation is split on many transgender issues and the subject of pronouns often serves as a flashpoint.
In 2018, a college professor in Ohio was fired from Shawnee State University for refusing to use a student’s pronouns. They took the university to court and won $400,000 in damages, McClatchy News reported.
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