A Christian school in Vermont reached a $566,000 settlement with state education agencies to cover damages and legal fees after the school was banned from all sports and academic competitions for two years for refusing to allow its girls’ basketball team to compete against a transgender athlete in 2023.

“VICTORY – $566,000! Our client, Mid Vermont Christian School, has won more than half a million dollars after it was punished for standing up for women’s sports,” Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), its law firm, said on X.

Fox News shared further:

The settlement comes after a years-long saga in which all the school’s sports teams, and even its academic teams, like spelling bee and mathletes, had to travel out of state to compete against other schools.

The conflict dates back to an afternoon early in the 2023 school year at Mid Vermont Christian, when the school decided to forfeit a girls’ basketball postseason game against a team with a trans athlete.

Their Christian faith was more important to them than a game. But it was still a hard call, and it brought some tears.

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“We were all in agreement that the right decision was to not compromise our beliefs and to withdraw, but the conversation with the players was the hardest,” Mid Vermont Christian girls’ basketball coach Chris Goodwin told Fox News Digital.

“Because you play a 20-game season, and you put in the work and the expectation is that you enter the postseason tournament with a shot to see how you’re going to do and to see how far you can get. So there were some teary eyes, and some sad faces, but in the end, they all really did understand that it was the right thing to do.”

But it was about to get much harder for not just the team, but for the entire school of about 111 students.

“The largest sports association for middle and high schools in the state is the Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA). In 2023, the VPA expelled Mid Vermont Christian and then denied the school readmission from all VPA sports,” the ADF wrote.

“While the VPA’s general policy is to separate boys’ and girls’ athletics and to prevent boys from competing in girls’ sports ‘to protect opportunities for girl athletes,’ it adopted a new policy which undermines that very principle. The policy required Vermont schools like Mid Vermont Christian to assign athletes to teams based on their ‘gender identity’ rather than their actual sex, and it forces female athletes to compete in athletic events against males,” it continued.

“As a Christian school, Mid Vermont Christian believes that men and women are different and that sex cannot be changed. M.G., a student enrolled at Mid Vermont Christian who competes on the varsity girls’ basketball team, also holds these beliefs. But the policy would have forced M.G., Mid Vermont Christian, and many other students and their families to violate their beliefs,” the law firm added.

More below:

The ADF explained further:

As a result of the VPA’s policy, a male athlete who is over six feet tall was allowed to compete on the high school girls’ basketball team at the Long Trail School in Dorset, Vermont, during the 2022-23 season.

Mid Vermont Christian was matched up against Long Trail in the first round of the 2023 VPA Division 4 Girls’ State Basketball tournament. Mid Vermont Christian alerted the VPA that it had concerns over playing against the male athlete, but the VPA denied Mid Vermont Christian’s request for a conversation. So Mid Vermont Christian chose to forfeit the game instead of violating its religious beliefs by forcing its female athletes to play against a male. Shortly thereafter, the VPA announced it would immediately suspend Mid Vermont Christian from competing in all sports and activities.

The VPA first flouted its own policies and failed to provide Mid Vermont Christian with a notice of alleged violations. And then the association submitted testimony hostile to the school’s beliefs to the Vermont legislature. Mid Vermont Christian appealed its expulsion internally at the VPA, but the VPA doubled down on the expulsion, and said Mid Vermont’s religious reason for forfeiting the game was, “wrong.”

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In November 2023, ADF attorneys filed a lawsuit against Vermont officials on behalf of Mid Vermont Christian. After a district court denied the school’s injunction request that would have allowed it readmission into the VPA for all sports, ADF attorneys appealed the case to the 2nd Circuit.

Fortunately, in September 2025, the 2nd Circuit ruled in favor of Mid Vermont Christian, handing it a crucial victory.

“The VPA likely violated Mid Vermont’s First Amendment right to free exercise of religion because its consideration of Mid Vermont’s case was not neutral,” the ruling reads.

The court went on to explain: “[the VPA] acted with hostility toward Mid Vermont’s religious beliefs. The VPA’s Executive Director publicly castigated Mid Vermont—and religious schools generally—while the VPA rushed to judgment on whether and how to discipline the school. In upholding the expulsion, the VPA doubled down on that hostility by challenging the legitimacy of the school’s religious beliefs. And … the punishment imposed was unprecedented, overbroad, and procedurally irregular. Those facts strongly support the inference that Mid Vermont’s religious objection ‘was not considered with the neutrality that the Free Exercise Clause requires.’”

Religious schools and their families should not have to abandon their religious beliefs and practices to participate in public benefits programs like state-sponsored school athletics. Female athletes should not be forced to compete against males, and state agencies cannot show hostility towards religious schools that follow their beliefs.

And it’s clear the 2nd Circuit agrees. Because of the 2nd Circuit’s ruling, Mid Vermont Christian School will no longer be barred from VPA athletics, while the case proceeds, simply for forfeiting one basketball game.

This win for Mid Vermont Christian ensures that state officials in the Green Mountain State cannot show hostility toward religious schools and their students. Will you give to support other cases protecting the right of people of faith to live out their beliefs without facing government punishment?

 

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