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A former Wisconsin school teacher received a $20,000 settlement in mid-March after the Argyle School District fired him for refusing to use students’ preferred names and pronouns (should they be transgender or otherwise).
English teacher Jordan Cernek sued the district in July 2024 after his contract was not renewed, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation. He alleged that the district violated his right to free exercise of his religion and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. “Mr. Cernek has a sincerely held religious belief that God makes no mistakes when it comes to sex and gender and that calling a transgender student by a name or pronouns at odds with their biological sex would cause Mr. Cernek to affirm that God made a mistake in creating a transgender person as a male or a female,” the lawsuit stated. “In Mr. Cernek’s religious view, affirming a transgender person’s identity through the use of preferred names and pronouns would be speaking a falsehood and violate his religious beliefs.”
Settlement Reached
The case was dismissed in February after both parties reached the settlement. Cernek joins a whole host of other educators who’ve won cases against their school districts for similar situations, DCNF noted. A Virginia school board fired one high school teacher who refused to use preferred pronouns, and ended up paying a $575,000 settlement in September 2024. A $450,000 settlement was reached in a similar case in Ohio the same year. (MORE: Veteran Goes Viral For Bold Statement On US Parks)
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