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Virginia’s radical school board takes teacher to state Supreme Court over opposition to trans ideology

July 7, 2021 | | Print Article

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A radical Virginia school board that suspended a gym teacher two months ago for airing his religious beliefs is refusing to back down, despite a judicial ruling reversing the suspension.

Instead, the school board of Loudoun County has doubled down by reportedly appealing the ruling to the Virginia Supreme Court.

And all this because former gym teacher Byron Tanner Cross stated during a public school board hearing on May 25 that his religious beliefs forbid him from endorsing transgender ideology.

“I love all of my students, but I will never lie to them regardless of the consequences. I’m a teacher, but I serve God first, and I will not affirm that a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa because it’s against my religion, it’s lying to my child, it’s abuse to a child and it’s sinning against our God,” he said at the time.

Listen:

Cross was suspended days after the hearing seen above. He responded by recruiting the lawyers with the Alliance Defending Freedom organization to fight back. They, in turn, secured him a judicial victory on June 8th with Virginia’s 20th Judicial Circuit Court.

In a ruling, the court approved ADF’s request for a temporary injunction against the school district, meaning the district has to un-suspend Cross. The suspension applies until the end of the year, with the assumption being that an actual trial will be held sometime before then.

“The Plaintiff’s request for a temporary injunction against the Defendants is hereby granted. Defendants shall immediately reinstate the Plaintiff to his position as it was prior to the issuance of his suspension and remove the ban that was placed upon him from all buildings and grounds of Loudon County Public Schools,” the order reads.

But the Loudoun County school board, which is the same radicalized board that’s faced scrutiny for endorsing critical race theory propaganda, doxing and harassing parents, and reportedly making pornographic material available to students, has refused to comply.

According to Alliance Defending Freedom, in late June the school board appealed the 20th Judicial Circuit Court’s decision to the Virginia Supreme Court rather than simply un-suspend Cross.

In response, ADF has filed a motion with the upper court arguing that the request for an appeal has no merit.

In a statement, ADF senior counsel Tyson Langhofer said that there’s “no reason” for the higher court to even humor the school board’s request.

“Public schools have no right to suspend someone simply for respectfully providing their opinion at a public meeting. The lower court’s decision ordering Tanner’s reinstatement was a well-reasoned application of these facts to clearly established law, so there is no reason for the Virginia Supreme Court to take this appeal,” he said.

“The school district wants to force Tanner to endorse its ideals and shut down any opposing views. That violates the Constitution and laws of Virginia, and so did the school’s move to place Tanner on leave,” he added.

In every single matter, in fact, the school board has behaved like this.

When local parents began speaking out about the board’s endorsement of racial essentialist CRT propaganda, board members reportedly began collaborating with local pro-CRT zealots to promote the harassment and intimidation of their critics.

“On March 12, members of the private Facebook group ‘Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County’ began to compile names. The group’s members in Loudoun County, Virginia — one of the last school districts in the United States to desegregate, where white students now make up less than half of total enrollment — were concerned about growing opposition to diversity and equity programs in the local public schools,” according to NBC News.

“They believed other parents were spreading false claims about these initiatives, and so a handful of members started a list of these opponents as a way of tracking the claims and countering them. One member of the anti-racist group suggested infiltrating or hacking the websites of groups opposed to diversity programs.”

School board members were reportedly members of the group.

Learn more via the following Fox News’ “Fox & Friends First” segment from late March:

Members of the group denied that they’d been up to no good.

“Several members of the anti-racist Facebook group said they never intended to harass anyone, and considered the name sharing in the private group to be more in line with oppositional research than an attempt at intimidation,” NBC News sympathetically reported.

Board members have also repeatedly claimed that the district isn’t teaching CRT propaganda, despite there being copious video evidence demonstrating otherwise.

Case in point:

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Vivek Saxena
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