Christian Teacher Who Lost Job Over Refusal to Use Students’ Preferred Pronouns Wins $650k Settlement

An Indiana teacher said his public school district forced him out of his job after refusing to respect his Christian faith. Now, eight years later, the teacher has received a $650,000 settlement.

John Kluge, a former music and orchestra teacher at Brownsburg Community School Corporation, won his case against the school after he said he was forced to use students’ preferred names and pronouns, a policy that Kluge said went against his Christian faith.

“We hope this settlement shows teachers that they do not have to bow the knee to ideological mandates that violate their religious beliefs,” David Cortman, vice president of U.S. Litigation at Alliance Defending Freedom, said in a news release. “And schools should learn that refusing to accommodate religious employees can be illegal and expensive.”

Along with the monetary aspect of the settlement, the district must “train its senior staff on how Title VII protects religious employees against discrimination,” Kluge’s lawyers said.

In 2017, the school created a policy that required staff members to refer to students by the name listed in the school database, which could be anything, as transgender-identifying students were allowed to change their name and pronouns.

For one year, Kluge was permitted to refer to students by their last names, given his discomfort with the policy and his personal convictions, according to court documents. The school, however, changed its mind and no longer permitted the accommodation.

Then, in May 2018, Kluge was given an ultimatum, according to the complaint: either comply or leave.

Even though Brownsburg schools settled the case, it insists the choice was in its best financial interest, and continues to assert that the school neither infringed upon Kluge’s First Amendment nor civil rights.

“The school corporation has not wavered in its belief that Mr. Kluge’s decision to resign came after the school corporation followed its policy and applicable federal laws and acted in the best interest of its students,” the district said in a statement.

The path to Kluge’s victory, however, was not easy.

The case went through Southern Indiana’s U.S. District Court and the Seventh Circuit Court, both of which sided with the school. In these rulings, the courts said Kluge’s refusal to use students’ preferred names caused harm to the student.

“[The court] concludes that a name carries with it enough importance to overcome a public school corporation’s duty to accommodate a teacher’s sincerely held religious beliefs against a policy that requires staff to use transgender students’ preferred names when supported by a parent and health care provider,” Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson wrote in her 2021 opinion.

A 2023 Supreme Court decision — Groff v. Dejoy — set a precedent that there is a higher threshold, on behalf of the employer, to prove that an employee’s religious accommodation places an undue burden.

The question then solely became Kluge’s Civil Rights Act religious discrimination claim. When the district court reexamined the case, it once again ruled in favor of the school, but the circuit court prevailed for Kluge.

The district maintains that it “prevailed on the majority of Mr. Kluge’s legal claims,” with the district court even asserting the district had a “legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason” to fire Kluge, per the emotional harm his convictions caused.

“We continue to believe that Mr. Kluge’s free speech rights and his rights to freely exercise his religion were not infringed at Brownsburg Schools,” the district said in its statement.