The Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA) promotes the inclusion of transgender students in interscholastic sports and prohibits discrimination and harassment based on gender identity. When Mid Vermont Christian School refused to play a girls’ basketball game against another school because the opposing team included a transgender athlete, it violated the VPA’s policies on gender identity.
The school filed a lawsuit challenging the VPA’s enforcement of its antidiscrimination policies. The school argues that its decision to forfeit was partly motivated by religious beliefs and that the VPA’s policy thus violates the school’s rights under the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution. The U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont rejected the school’s arguments, and the school appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
On October 22, 2024, Americans United filed an amicus brief before the Second Circuit. We argue that the school’s religious beliefs do not excuse its noncompliance with VPA policies. That’s because religion-neutral and generally applicable policies are subject to relaxed judicial scrutiny (sometimes referred to as “rational-basis review”), even if such policies incidentally burden a religious belief or practice.
This is not a case about Mid Vermont Christian School’s religious freedom—it’s a case about religious pluralism. Religious freedom does not include the right to violate a religion-neutral, generally applicable antidiscrimination policy. Church–state separation means that the government can’t pick favorites by giving some groups a license to discriminate. Our brief focuses on why rational-basis review—and not a more exacting form of scrutiny—applies to the VPA’s policy, and explains that the policy therefore does not violate the school’s religious-freedom rights.
