Virginia high court rules for teacher in transgender debate

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) The Supreme Court of Virginia has upheld a lower court ruling that ordered the reinstatement of a northern Virginia gym teacher who said he won t refer to transgender students by the pronouns they use.

Loudoun County Public Schools appealed to the state Supreme Court after a judge ruled that the school system violated the free speech rights of teacher Tanner Cross by suspending him after he spoke up at a school board meeting.

Cross, a teacher at Leesburg Elementary, cited his religious convictions at a May board meeting in which the school board debated proposed changes to its policies in treatment of transgender students. Cross said he would not use the pronouns used by transgender students.

School boards across the state have been revising their policies to be more inclusive of transgender students in accordance with a new state law. But Loudoun County, outside the nation s capital, has been a particular flashpoint in the debate over not just transgender students but also how students learn about racism and race relations.

via apnews.com

This is a bigger story than AP makes it appear.

Do you need to cite “religious convictions” for using pronouns as objective signifiers, so to speak? Could you also cite philosophical convictions, such as being a, call it, semantic realist?