The Allen family and the Vermont School District have arrived at a settlement after the family filed a lawsuit for alleged punishment over their objections to a transgender student using the female locker room. As part of the settlement, the Vermont School Boards Insurance Trust has been ordered to pay $125,000 in damages and legal fees to Travis Allen, his daughter Blake Allen, and their legal team from the Alliance Defending Freedom.
Travis Allen, who was suspended from his role as a middle school soccer coach, will be reinstated, and all disciplinary records against him and his daughter will be expunged. In addition, the school district is obligated to remove any online content associated with the locker room issue, along with supportive messages displayed at Randolph Union Middle/High School directed towards the transgender student.
Phil Sechler, senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, heralded the settlement as a “resounding victory for freedom of speech”, pointing out that “calling a male a male” should not have led to disciplinary actions. The lawsuit, filed in October, argued that the Allens’ punishment came about as a result of expressing their opinion on a significant public issue: whether a biological male identifying as female should be allowed to change in a girls’ locker room, regardless of potential discomfort caused to the girls.
The lawsuit stated that the comments made by both Travis and Blake, which included using male pronouns for the trans-identifying student, were crucial to their standpoint on the appropriate usage of the locker room. The school’s administration was accused of punishing them for “misgendering” the student and for “harassment” and “bullying”.
The case was initiated after Travis Allen was suspended from his coaching position for referring to the trans-identifying student as male, an incident that followed a Daily Signal video featuring his daughter Blake expressing her discomfort about sharing a locker room with a biological male. Fellow female students also shared their experiences of feeling uncomfortable when the student remained in the locker room while they were changing.