Mary Margaret Olohan, for the Daily Signal
A Vermont school district punished a father and his daughter for speaking out against a biological male in the girls’ locker room. Now, The Daily Signal has learned, the district has settled with the Allen family in what its legal team is hailing as a “resounding victory.”
That settlement requires that the Vermont School Boards Insurance Trust pay $125,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees and costs to Travis Allen and Jessica Allen, on behalf of their daughter, Blake Allen, and their attorneys with the Alliance Defending Freedom.
Under the settlement, the district will reinstate Travis Allen, the father, as middle school soccer coach, and will scrub any records of discipline against Travis Allen and daughter Blake from school records.
Further, the settlement requires the Orange Southwest School District Board and school officials named in the Allens’ lawsuit to remove any content posted online by the school related to the locker room business as well as from the bulletin board or boards at Randolph Union Middle/High School displaying “love and support” messages to the trans-identifying student.
The Alliance Defending Freedom hailed the settlement as a huge win for the Allen family.
“The settlement of Blake and Travis Allen’s case is a resounding victory for freedom of speech,” Phil Sechler, senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, told The Daily Signal on Thursday.
“Calling a male a male shouldn’t have cost Travis his job and gotten Blake kicked out of school,” he added. “We are very glad that the school agreed to do the right thing by giving Travis his coaching job back and dropping the discipline against Blake. Everyone has the right to speak freely, and we are grateful that this settlement further protects that right.”
In their lawsuit filed in October, the Allens said that they “were punished for expressing their view on a matter of profound public concern: whether a teenage male who ‘identifies’ as female should be permitted to change in a girls’ locker room, regardless of the discomfort experienced by the girls in that room.”
“In objecting to a male being in the room while the girls are changing, Travis and Blake each made comments underscoring that the trans-identifying student is in fact a male, including by using male pronouns,” said the lawsuit, details of which were first obtained by The Daily Signal. “Indeed, their view of the student’s maleness was foundational to their opinions on appropriate use of the locker room.”
“Yet, their remarks were too much for Defendants’ transgender orthodoxy—Travis was deemed to have ‘misgendered’ the student, while Blake was found guilty of ‘harassment’ and ‘bullying’—so Defendants disciplined both of them.”
Categories: Education
Good news about this case but it certainly did not go far enough. Kiddos to the Plaintiffs!
Yea! Congratulations, Blake. Finally someone has he guts to exercise ‘free speech’!!!
The school district got off cheaply.
A wake up call to the woke.
Now will common sense become common,
A shame the school board officials were not held personally liable in this case, hitting them in the pocketbook would have been better. Nice the Allens won this case, hopefully other ” woke ” schools will take note.
Superintendent Millington was the lead prosecutor of the girl and her Dad. COMPLETE resolution and closure would entail him being individually liable, with punitive damages, as well as unemployed.
Nowhere near enough for the degree of sexual harassment & trauma that girl went through, without even accounting for the mass media’s mischaracterization & further harassment of her. Her father endured his own sufferings but at least he is an adult.
What a state – kowtowing to every pop culture craze & praising fake “science” as they injure & traumatize children.
Great job, Vermont! Bravo! And by the way, what goes around, comes around — or “karma” as you ol’ hippies might prefer to refer to it as.
“The Alliance Defending Freedom hailed the settlement as a huge win for the Allen family.”
It’s also a huge win for decency and for the safety and competitive fairness for girls/women. Decent people owe a debt to this organization for fighting the good fight.
I have compassion for the mentally ill who are struggling with their identity, but it stops when their struggle involves harming others.
I’m glad the family doesn’t have to carry the financial burden that all of this incurred but the other, difficult to define and enumerate, burdens of reputation wrecking, relationship destroying, emotional distress dare I say trauma that was caused by this incident, is not so easy to wrap up. Much less the fact that things will never go back to being the same for the family. I can’t imagine how much hate was sent their way. You know the community that supported that individual in the wrong locker room likely sent a huge amount of hate and vitriol towards them and yet the Allen’s still were formally “chastised” for “misgendering” and “harassment and bullying”. What would have been a proper legal outcome would have been to have the individual in question found guilty of indecent exposure to minors or similar such charge. That would have been real justice. And the fact that our state and a large contingent of its residents don’t think so, is enormously distressing to me. It’s unconscionable that we, the citizens of Vermont and indeed, the citizens of the world, allow this perverted behavior to go unchecked.
Perhaps the Randolph High School principals should be forced to write a 750 word essay on why and how Marxism. CRT and transgenderism are ruining our education system. שולמ
The Truth is both students in this case were used and abused by the State and the school district. The biological male student was used as a tool for an agenda. The young lady was used as cannon fodder to further highlight the agenda. The young lady’s father was used as a villian to showcase as an example of what happens if you go against the agenda. It should be glaringly clear by now that children are being staulked and abused by a corrupt and complicit system of tyranical despots. One court case decided, several more to go. Let the boomerang fly. It is time to start laying down criminal charges against the perpetrators of child abuse and exploitation.
Compared to the 1.43 billion taxpayers spend on crap public/woke education indoctrination, this is less than chicken feed. The “Vermont School Boards Insurance Trust”, whatever that is, will take this on the chin with ease and nothing will change as we march towards Marxism. Vermont public schools are the biggest waste of our dollars, period.
With some legislators pushing to remove qualified immunity for law enforcement, this should give some consideration to the concept of holding education professionals PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE for policies and actions that in any normal society would be considered child sexual exploitation or abuse. Locker rooms, public restrooms, prisons and certain sports have traditionally been and should remain segregated by ANATOMY.
A major victory for womens sports, lets keep it REAL for those athletes, enough of the BS!
It’s great that the Allan family prevailed in their suit. But the pay out is coming from our tax dollars, right? If that’s so, I’m sure it doesn’t mean much to the perpetrators. After all, it’s no skin off their noses, right? The people behind this travesty should have to pay with their own money and they should be fired and prevented from ever having any control of anything to do with children, in or out of school, now and forever. Until these perps are personally punished, this will keep happening. No repercussions means no regret. They will continue to foist their perverted sensibilities on kids. It’s time to make them pay personally for the harm they have done to our children, not the state.
Did this victory won by the Allen family with the help of ADF deal only with their right to speak in objection to the school’s immoral policy of allowing a male in the girl’s locker room while they were dressing or did the policy also change that would exclude males and guarantee the privacy and safety of the females? Would someone address this question please?