A LEGAL dispute over a Christian music teacher’s refusal to use students’ preferred pronouns has been referred back to the courts in the United States: one of a number of continuing legal battles over whether employees can be forced to use a person’s preferred pronouns.
The case of John Kluge is one of several in the lower courts in the US centred on pronoun use by teachers who are claiming their right to freedom of speech and religion in refusing to refer to students by their chosen pronouns.
Mr Kluge, an orchestral teacher, sued Brownsburg Community School corporation after it withdrew the faith-based accommodation that it had made which had enabled him to refer to all students by their last names. He originally lost his case, but it has been referred back to an Indiana federal court, after the Supreme Court in Groff v. DeJoy this summer ruled that public bodies had to accommodate religious exemptions, unless they led to “substantial increased costs”.
Legal experts, however, have said that the Groff ruling requires further clarification to help courts to determine what a substantial burden on employers is.
Brownsburg Community School argued that Mr Kluge’s reference to all students by their last name singled out transgender students and made them feel awkward and uncomfortable.
The referral of the case back to the courts will test whether the alleged harm caused to transgender students, and the disruption to the learning environment caused by accommodating a teacher’s refusal, does constitute a substantial burden on the school.
Further continuing lawsuits against schools in the US include a case by a group of Christian and Muslim families to enable them to pull their children out of the classroom when LGBTQ+ books are being read.
Montgomery County Public Schools, in Maryland, introduced a new English-language/arts curriculum for primary-school students which uses books that give perspectives from the LGBTQ+ community.
According to news reports, one of the books used for the youngest children tells the story of a family celebrating Pride Day, and another tells the story of a mother making a rainbow-coloured wig for her transgender daughter.
Three Muslim and Christian families sued, claiming that teaching the new material without giving parents the chance to excuse their children infringed their religious freedom. A US district court, however, dismissed the parents’ request to opt out temporarily at the start of the school year. The claim will now progress to a full hearing.
In Oregon, another ruling now allows for the return of amputated body parts to patients for cultural, spiritual, or religious reasons.
The Bill, which will take effect this month, was supported by the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, who argued that keeping a person’s body together was necessary for a smooth transition to the spirit world.
“In our spirituality, one of our sayings is ‘One body, one mind,’” Wilson Wewa, a spiritual leader of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and and an oral-historian, told the Associated Press. “When there’s amputation, most of our tribal members know that we need to be whole at the time of our leaving this world to the next.”
Previously, body parts were cremated, and the remains were then returned to the family or the patient; but Mr Wewa said that this was not satisfactory for some patients, who were refusing life-saving amputations for fear of not being reunited with their body parts.