Terms will be announced later; doesn’t get job back
by Mike Donoghue
BURLINGTON — The longtime Woodstock Union High School snowboard coach, who says he was illegally fired because he joined in a brief conversation by two team members about a transgender student competing for an opposing school, has reached an out-of-court settlement.
Veteran coach David J. Bloch, who founded the school snowboarding program in 2011, has maintained he was unlawfully fired in February 2023, and that both his First Amendment and due process rights were violated by School Superintendent Sherry Sousa, the Windsor Central Supervisory Union Board and others.
Several people involved in the lawsuit said this week they were unable to provide the exact amount of the settlement until it was signed and delivered. It did sound like Bloch will not be getting his $4,439 seasonal job back.
Burlington lawyer Pietro Lynn, who helps represent Sousa and the school board, did acknowledge that the proposed payment to Bloch “was a fraction of the cost of defending the claims.”
Lynn confirmed that once the payment is made, the entire case will go away, including the recent appeal by Bloch to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York City.
Bloch has appealed the initial findings of Federal Judge Christina Reiss in Burlington, who rejected in December the plaintiff’s request for a preliminary injunction seeking his reinstatement. Reiss said in a 51-page decision that Bloch failed to show he faced immediate irreparable harm. She also ruled the preliminary injunction was unwarranted, but said in the Dec. 28 ruling that certain parts of Bloch’s lawsuit could proceed in a regular timeline.
However, the parties asked the federal court Tuesday afternoon to halt the case and all the pending deadlines “while the parties execute their settlement agreement.” They noted a proposed settlement had been reached with help from an early neutral evaluator, Gregory S. Clayton of Montpelier and Camden, Maine.
Clayton, in his mediation report to the U.S. District Court in Burlington, wrote that a full settlement was reached after meeting with the parties from 10 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. on Jan. 25.
Douglas O’Donnell of the Vermont School Boards Insurance Trust attended the session, and he was among the people listed as having settlement authority for the defendants. Records show Sousa and the school board did not attend the mediation session – the first effort to settle the case outside court.
“The parties have agreed on settlement terms and expect to execute a settlement agreement soon, which will result in the stipulated dismissal of this case,” according to a filing Tuesday afternoon by lawyers for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents Bloch.
Attempts to reach Bloch were unsuccessful.
Attorney Mathew W. Hoffman of the Alliance Defending Freedom said it was an important victory for Bloch.
“Public schools can’t fire employees for respectful speech on a matter of public concern,” Hoffman said.
“Dave, like every other person, is protected under the First Amendment to respectfully share his personal beliefs, and the Vermont Agency of Education even acknowledged that Dave did not violate policy or Vermont law simply by sharing his perspective. As a result of Dave’s courage in filing suit, the truth is clear—everyone has the right to express his or her opinion, especially on matters of public concern.”
Assistant Attorney General Jaime Kraybill, who is assigned to the AOE and represented it at the September hearing, said later she was unable to offer comments on the case.
Attempts to reach Assistant Attorney General Kate Gallagher, who also is assigned to the case, could not be reached for comment before deadline.
The motion said all parties agreed to the proposed stay for all deadlines in the case.
“Thus, good cause exists for the Court to issue a stay of all case deadlines pending execution of the settlement agreement and dismissal of this case,”
the filing said.
Another defendant, Jay Nichols, executive director of the Vermont Principals’ Association, also acknowledged the settlement, but said he was precluded from discussing it this week. Nichols and the VPA had maintained they had nothing to do with the firing and didn’t even know Bloch. Bloch has maintained VPA policies were used to force him out.
Also named as a defendant was Heather Bouchey, interim secretary of education for Vermont, but attempts to reach her lawyers about the settlement were unsuccessful.
Burlington lawyer Sean M. Toohey, who helped Lynn defend Sousa and the school district, also said he was unable to comment on the terms of the settlement until they had been reduced to writing and signed off by all parties.
The Woodstock boys and girls were at a snowboarding meet at Jay Peak in February 2023 when Hartford High had a male athlete who identified as a female, competing against the girls, according to Bloch’s lawsuit.
Two Woodstock Union student-athletes – a boy and a girl – were having a private conversation in the lodge about the situation during a break in the competition. Bloch, who overheard part of the chat, said he joined the private conversation briefly and mentioned that males have a physical advantage over females in sports.
It was unclear how Hartford High, whose team traveled on the same bus as Woodstock, heard about the conversation, but it filed a hearsay complaint that night, records show. The Woodstock High School assistant principal and athletic director did a brief investigation the following morning. By early afternoon, Sousa fired Bloch, who founded the snowboard program in 2011.
Nichols and Bouchey have said they had nothing to do with his firing – or even his hiring.
Bloch maintained in his lawsuit that he was engaged in Constitutionally protected speech and that school officials never provided him his rights, including how to appeal the dismissal, nor gave him a copy of the investigative report.
Bloch also believes God created males and females with immutable sex and that based on scientific evidence there are only two sexes, male and female, his ADF lawyers.
Sousa has said the ruling by Reiss “demonstrates that our decision to demand that school employees behave in a way that is consistent with a supportive, respectful and inclusive learning environment is both the right thing to do and consistent with the law.”
Bloch’s lawyers noted the coach was never told he had the right to a lawyer, a right to present witnesses and the right to appeal his dismissal. Bloch said he was never provided a copy of the investigative report that Sousa promised him when she fired him. As it turned out there was never a written report, but rather just notes provided by the athletic director and assistant principal.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, which is helping represent Bloch, is a national group that successfully sued Randolph Union school officials in another transgender case in October 2022. The lawsuit noted the Randolph school tried to take disciplinary action against a female student-athlete who became upset by a biological male claiming to be a female going into the girls’ locker room when the volleyball team was changing. The defendants, including the school district, resolved the case for $125,000 in May 2023. The district, which had suspended her father as a soccer coach at the middle school, also agreed to restore him to the post and remove any reference to the incident from her school record.
Layne Millington, Superintendent of the Orange Southwest Supervisory in Randolph recently announced that he was resigning at the end of the school year. The Herald of Randolph newspaper reported Millington said he was disappointed in what he saw as a lack of community support he received for trying to impose discipline on the girl and her father during the volleyball case.
Discover more from Vermont Daily Chronicle
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Categories: Education
Living north of the border must be like living upstairs over an exploding meth lab.
What’s an exploding meth lab like, WhateverBill? – assuming of course that you have experience in that regard. After all, I thought all the meth was brewed down your way and simply trafficked north of the border.
The sane world regards amerika as an aberration, kinda like the USSR just before the fall.
The ‘sane world’? How would you know? An ‘aberration’? Like your commentary?
He is ,obviously, trolling.
As a poster apparently correctly characterized your usual remarks yesterday……medication side effects. Try cutting it in half.
To those pushing the agenda and to those parroting the narrative: billable hours, settlements, monetary judgements, punative damages come out of your pockets too – systemic lawfare warfare has a more costly, significant, impactful price tag attached than your tender, fragile feelings. Hence the term: go woke, go broke.
Pleased to hear that this matter has been resolved to the satisfaction of both parties. But the underlying problem remains: the suppression of that most basic of truths: there are only two sexes, and you are either born one way or the other. Painting stripes on a cow doesn’t make it a zebra.
Of course, the other underlying problem is the hijacking of our educational system by the Deranged Left ™, while the rest of us were busy keeping society functioning. But that is a whole ‘nother discussion.
Congratulations, Coach.
The republican version of “keeping society functioning” includes homophobia, racism, government dysfunction, criminal presidential candidates, war on women, and just plain stupidity.
Whatever – WhateverBill.
Says the MSNBC puppet! Some folks are easily led & indoctrinated: democrats. Some are independent thinkers: conservatives.
Well, I I’ll admit the latter of those you must recognize immediately based upon your disturbed comments.
US economy adds stunning 353,000 jobs in January.
Thanks, Joe.
US prosecuting political opponents, (even Dem Kennedy denied secret service protection) tens of millions of illegal, unvetted, unknown, indigent immigrants now in the USA wreaking havoc, flagrant violations of federal law especially immigration law, violent crime out of control in democrat-run cities, freedom of speech & religion openly violated by this POTUS’s weaponized FBI.
THANKS, JOE!!!!!!!!!!
Good point billfromwherever:
The problem, of course, in monthly reports is with the ‘expectation’. It’s like trying to predict how much snow or rain will fall from one month to the next. But if one checks the U.S. Bureau of Labor Stats for Vermont, for example, the Labor Force Participation Rate, while having risen since the Covid crash of 2020, remains below pre-Covid levels. As does the Employment to Population Ratio and the Labor Force. Total Employment and the Unemployment Rate, however, are now flat at pre-Covid levels. In other words, one month does not a bull or bear market make.
But what does remain clear is that the tax subsidized government, healthcare, education, and utility sectors account for the lion’s share of employment and job growth in Vermont. Make of that what you will. Especially given the following.
One aspect of this economy that is curious, is that while Vermonters struggle to become ‘carbon neutral’, the Biden administration has the oil and natural gas industry firing on all cylinders, setting the highest crude oil production record in U. S. history in 2023 – not to mention record profits and tax revenues.
Why are we being forced to use heat pumps, drive EVs, and pay double for wind and solar generated electricity, while the rest of the country is flooding itself with oil? Something doesn’t make sense.
September 6, 2019
NEW CASTLE, N.H. (AP) — Joe Biden is looking voters in the eye and promising to “end fossil fuel.”
I mean, come on everyone. How can anyone trust this man?
“mentioned that males have a physical advantage over females in sports.”
Regardless of one’s opinion of the morality or propriety of being able to “change” one’s gender, and whether “gender” is considered a “social construct” independent of anatomical and physiological “sex”, the man merely stated a biological fact. If stating a fact gets someone fired from a job in a school, that’s a real problem. Thank God for the Alliance Defending Freedom. “Identify as” whatever you like, people, that is protected free expression, but the whole reason we as a society embrace the concept of segregated sports, prisons and restrooms/changing facilities is for the benefit of women’s safety, and the segregation criterium is ANATOMICAL for a reason.
“Thank God for the Alliance Defending Freedom.”
Which god? Allah, Budha, Vishnu, or jesus the drag queen?
Thanks for reminding us why Vermont Daily Chronicle exists.
Again, with the leftist talking point straight ‘outta Rules for Radicals. You better PRAY you’re somehow right and TRILLIONS of people before you & within the present day are wrong. (And I’m betting you do!)
All your comments are irrational, bizarre, sophomoric, and utterly disjointed. If you get paid for this, your compensation is WAY too high no matter what it might be.
billfromwhiteplains, if you weren’t ignorant, you’d have a more accurate understanding of the phrase “God”.
And the false god of deconstruction proceeds like a wrecking ball throughout our society.
Sounds like if conservatives took their own advice and “stuck to sports” he’d still have a job. Hope that hot take was worth it.
Men in WOMEN’S sports isn’t sport – it’s an abomination of science, biological, and common sense. Too bad you cannot take your disordered “party’s” own advice and “follow the science.” Pathetic. And you’re a “teacher”? Lol! Off from school AGAIN today? What is it LGBTQNUTWAD Heritage Day?
I assigned Fountainhead to read and they all fell asleep so I had a minute. I know you’re not working (or ever have) , but I do appreciate that you volunteer to be owned by me every time we interact. Thank you for your service
Chris: Re: The Fountainhead – Ah, those pesky Russian authors, they’re all the same. From Dostoevsky to Tolstoy to Solzhenitsyn to Ayn Rand, the never-ending soliloquies are enough to make your toes go numb.
You should have assigned Atlas Shrugged. BTW: Who is John Galt?
P.S. Chris: So you own Kathleen too? How do you manage all of us?
Aww….Chris…your callow comments merely continue to reflect the fact you’re not a history teacher, not a teacher, and almost certainly not even an adult. Now you “own” people? And all this while, I was sure you were opposed to slavery in all its forms just as REPUBLICAN Abraham Lincoln was in the 19th century.
But no matter, if Fountainhead was of no interest to those imaginary schoolchildren you teach – just switch over to one of the many books you have authored! Lol!
If ya can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
Is this supposed to be a coherent thought?
i guess i was wrong/// the key board thumpers are awake//// they will never go to the state house and confront the trolls///this is why nothing will get done///
Are you “thumping away” from there? And how do you personally know what civic-minded actions people on here are involved in or not? At least many have the spinal column to use their given names.
If only the coach was a cross-dresser himself or an illegal alien or a “migrant” or a member of any one of the other imaginary “oppressed” groups in America — he would have won millions.
my name is well know and has been for years///do some research/// thumper///
Your name isn’t well-known to anyone on VDC because you refuse to disclose it. So how about you just tell us what it is so we can all be equally impressed?
an associate of mine told me i was a///reactionary… disturber/// now i no what that means on this web site/// if you disturb some one you get a reaction///
correction know
Schools, VPA and state got off easy.
Glad to see that Coach Bloch is getting his day in court. Layne Millington victimized the Allen’s daughter, with 3 days of suspension in attempts to coerce an apology to the transgender student for having spoken out about the lack of privacy in the girls locker room. In his eyes it was all her fault and merited punishment. Layne threw fuel on the fire when the community gathered to hear out what happened. As superintendent, he should have been assuaging, instead within 3 minutes, he threw fuel on the fire. How many Vermont parents would like to have their girls being google eyed by a transgender who decides their male hormones are kicking in? Is it any wonder Layne didn’t get much community support?
All your squabbles may soon be irrelevant. Listen and learn:
https://rumble.com/v49xahl-disclosure-our-stratagem-trapped-all-rogue-elements-in-the-swiss-government.html
i am on this site to send a message///i am not doing this to be///equally impressed// i hope your are over the trauma of how i do my posting/// i do not take orders from other posters/// enough said///
Billy goat gruff the troll trip trap we all know the 353,000 jobs are just paying immigrants to illegally come in the country .
Both my daughters were coached by coach Bloch.. One of them competed in the Nationals under his leadership. He was always kind and super supportive of them both.. God forbid he states a fact that we all know to be true but most are afraid to admit.. Way too many crybabies out there.. they all need to retreat to their “safe spaces”..