Teacher fired for not using student’s trans pronouns wins in court

A Wisconsin school district agreed to pay out $20,000 to a teacher who was terminated for refusing to use preferred names and pronouns for transgender students.

Jordan Cernek, an English teacher, sued the Argyle School District in July 2024 after his contract was not renewed, alleging the district violated his right to free exercise of his religion and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

“Mr. Cernek has a sincerely held religious belief that God makes no mistakes when it comes to sex and gender and that calling a transgender student by a name or pronouns at odds with their biological sex would cause Mr. Cernek to affirm that God made a mistake in creating a transgender person as a male or a female,” the lawsuit filed by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty stated. “In Mr. Cernek’s religious view, affirming a transgender person’s identity through the use of preferred names and pronouns would be speaking a falsehood and violate his religious beliefs.”

While the district initially offered Cernek a religious accommodation exempting from the requirement to use students’ preferred name and pronouns, administrators later required him to adhere to the name policy, according to court records.

Cernek voiced his objections during a meeting in August 2022 when the school district announced its policy. Two transgender-identifying students in Cernek’s classes requested that staff refer to them using preferred names at the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year, per court records.

The case was dismissed in February after parties reached the settlement, according to court records.

Several teachers fired for declining to adhere to transgender name policies have secured similar settlements in the past months.

In September, a Virginia school board settled a lawsuit brought by a high school teacher fired for declining to refer to one of his students using prefered pronouns for $575,000. An Ohio school district reached a $450,000 settlement with a middle school teacher fired for the same reason in December after a federal court found the pronoun requirement equated to “compelled speech.”

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