The Freedom From Religion Foundation today is filing a second friend of the court brief on behalf of the Secular Student Alliance (SSA) contending that an Indiana public school district acted correctly in denying a teacher’s requested religious accommodation that served as cover for bigotry. This is the second time this case is headed to the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. FFRF earlier filed a brief on behalf of SSA in November 2021 as part of the first appeal.
The case involves Brownsburg (Ind.) High School orchestra teacher John Kluge, who maintained that calling transgender students by their chosen names violated his religion. The school’s official policy is that all teachers must use student names as listed in the school’s database, regardless of whether the name appears to align with the sex a student was assigned at birth. Initially, the school agreed Kluge could call students by only their last names in order to avoid using the first names of transgender and non-binary students. The parent of one transgender student noted, however, that the teacher continued to call the student “Miss,” causing the student “a lot of distress.” Other students complained regularly that Kluge’s practice also made them uncomfortable in class because it was obvious it was motivated by bigotry. The Brownsburg Community School Corporation subsequently revoked Kluge’s last-names-only accommodation due to complaints and proven harm to students. Rather than adhere to Brownsburg’s official name policy, Kluge voluntarily resigned.
After resigning in 2018, Kluge sued the school district for religious discrimination, saying that the school system failed to accommodate him in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Kluge initially lost this case. The district court and then the 7th Circuit ruled in the school’s favor. However, after the Supreme Court issued Groff v. DeJoy, a case that modified the religious accommodation standards under Title VII, the appeals court sent Kluge’s case back to the trial court. In April 2024, the district court once again ruled that Brownsburg High School did not violate the law by denying Kluge’s unreasonable and harmful accommodation. Kluge has now appealed this case to the 7th Circuit for the second time.
“As part of their educational mission, public schools like Brownsburg Community School Corporation have a duty and legitimate interest in ensuring students are educated in an inclusive, welcoming, safe environment that’s conducive to learning,” the FFRF-authored brief states. “A teacher’s actions and how those actions affect students bear directly upon the conduct of a school’s business. To that end, a teacher’s requested religious accommodation creates an undue hardship when it harms students and interferes with the educational environment, substantially burdening the school’s ability to conduct its educational business.”
The friend-of-the-court brief argues that in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Groff, the appeals court must analyze undue hardship by taking into consideration the unique aspects of the public school environment, including the school’s educational mission. The Supreme Court stated in Groff that “‘undue hardship’ is shown when a burden is substantial in the overall context of an employer’s business.”
Plus, the brief points out, teachers have a position of authority over students and cannot be allowed to abuse that authority. It would be irresponsible and unrealistic for the Brownsburg school district to evaluate Kluge’s requested religious accommodation without considering the power and influence that teachers hold over their students.
Kluge was first hired in 2014 to serve as the music and orchestra teacher at Brownsburg High School, and he stayed in that position until resigning at the end of the 2017-2018 school year. Students at Brownsburg High School who wished to participate in orchestra or take any of the music classes that Kluge was the sole instructor for had no choice but to submit to his instruction and thus his last-names-only accommodation. The fact that a transgender student eventually chose to stop taking orchestra classes altogether in order to avoid Kluge’s instruction is a testament to the imbalance of power that a teacher holds — and the serious, harmful consequences that arise when a teacher abuses that power.
Public schools are in the business of educating students, and creating an inclusive, welcoming environment for students is an essential part of succeeding in the education business. The critical role that teachers play in helping — or hindering — a school’s educational mission cannot be analyzed in a vacuum separate from students’ experiences and needs. For that reason, Brownsburg withdrew Kluge’s requested accommodation only after finding it “detrimental” to the learning environment for not only transgender and non-binary students, but also other students and faculty.
FFRF asserts that Title VII does not require a public school to provide a teacher with a religious accommodation that harms students, thus substantially burdening a school’s ability to conduct its legitimate educational mission.
“Further, common sense does not suggest that Title VII’s religious discrimination provision is meant to force a public school to permit a teacher to emotionally and psychologically harm students — who are children — in the name of accommodating that teacher’s religious beliefs,” the brief states. “That result would be perverse and antithetical to the spirit of inclusivity and pluralism that underpins
Inclusivity is not synonymous with hostility toward religion, and it is not discriminatory for a public school to place student needs over an employee’s harmful requested religious accommodation. Inclusivity is not a one-way street where teachers can demand their personal beliefs be accommodated while trampling upon the beliefs and identities of the students they’ve chosen to educate and intellectually nurture. Title VII’s text and the Supreme Court’s decision in Groff do not support such a narrow, one-way reading. In this instance, Brownsburg’s decision to no longer permit Kluge’s last-name-only accommodation was not an act of religious discrimination.
“An accommodation that harms minors entrusted to the government’s care and disrupts the educational environment poses an undue hardship on a public school, substantially burdening the conduct of a school’s educational mission,” the brief states. “Title VII does not, nor has it ever, required a public school to approve a teacher’s requested religious accommodation that harms students and thus negatively impacts a school’s ability to create and maintain a welcoming, inclusive learning environment.”
For all of these reasons, the judgment of the district court should be affirmed, the brief emphatically concludes.
“Public schools should not be forced to allow teachers to discriminate against students in the name of religion,” says Patrick Elliott, FFRF’s legal director. “We hope the court agrees.”
“Public schools should be sanctuaries of inclusivity, where every student is free to learn and grow in a supportive environment that celebrates the rich diversity of our nation,” says Kevin Bolling, executive director of the Secular Student Alliance, “A teacher’s personal religious beliefs should never be wielded as a weapon against students, particularly when those beliefs inflict harm.”
The Secular Student Alliance (“SSA”) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and network of over 200 groups on high school and college campuses dedicated to advancing nonreligious viewpoints in public discourse. The mission of the SSA is to organize, unite, educate and serve students and student communities that promote the ideals of scientific and critical inquiry, democracy, secularism and human-based ethics. SSA and its chapters and affiliates value the efforts of high schools, colleges, and universities to ensure an inclusive and welcoming educational environment.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is the largest association of freethinkers in the United States, representing over 40,000 atheists, agnostics and other nonreligious Americans, with several chapters nationwide, including more than 500 members and a chapter in Indiana. FFRF’s two primary purposes are to educate the public about nontheism and to defend the constitutional principle of separation between state and church.
