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An Ohio teacher who refused to use students preferred pronouns will take home $450,000 in a legal settlement with the local school district.
Vivian Geraghty brought the suit against the Jackson Local School District, about 20 miles south of Akron, in 2022 after she was told to resign from a middle school language arts position over her stance on the matter.
“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,” Logan Spena a legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, the organization representing Geraghty told local NBC4 Ohio.
“The First Amendment prohibits that abuse of power, and Jackson Local School District officials have learned that comes at a steep cost,” Spena added.
The settlement, reach last month, came after the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio ruled in August that the school’s pronoun policy was “not neutral” and that forcing Geraghty to use preferred pronouns was a form of “compelled speech.”
The brouhaha began in 2022 after Geraghty said two students request she use names that align “with their new gender identities rather than their legal names.” Another student had wanted to be called by different pronouns, citing a school policy requiring teachers to use students’ preferred pronouns.
Geraghty held firm, however, refusing to use either the pronouns or the students’ new names, citing her “religious beliefs and constitutional rights.” The school subsequently forced her to resign.