"Teacher Gets 6-Figure Last Laugh After School Forced Her Out For Refusing To Use Trans Pronouns"

"A Christian middle school teacher from Ohio will receive a sizable payout from her government school employer after administrators tried compelling her to call two self-described transgender students by their preferred names and pronouns.

Jackson Local School District settled with the teacher, Vivian Geraghty, Dec. 18 for $450,000 in damages and attorney fees following a lawsuit in which she argued that her First Amendment rights were violated, according to the Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented her.

She had been forced to resign from her position as English teacher for refusing to comply with a demand to enable the 'social transition' of two students who did not want to be called by their names and pronouns as listed on the school roster.

Geraghty could not fulfill that request because it violated her Christian convictions.

WCMH-TV reported that the two students approached Geraghty on the first day of school in August 2022, asking her to refer to them 'using names different from their names on the school’s roster.'

Geraghty refused, and 'continued to refer to the students using their deadnames, the name a trans person was assigned at birth but that does not align with their gender identity,' WCMH reported.

'That student then reached out to a school counselor, writing that ‘one of my teachers dead-naming me all the time in class.’

After several meetings with school administrators, Geraghty continued refusing to refer to the students by their 'new' pronouns.

'If that is your final decision, then we need a letter of resignation effective today,' the teacher said said she was told.

'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, legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, said in a statement.

'The First Amendment prohibits that abuse of power, and Jackson Local School District officials have learned that comes at a steep cost,' Spena added."