A Federal District Court Denies a Christian Teacher’s Title VII Claims Regarding Use of Students’ Preferred Names and Pronouns
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June 10, 2024
In a recent federal case out of Indiana, Kluge v. Brownsburg Community School Corporation, No. 1:19-cv-02462-JMS-KMB (S.D. Ind., Apr. 30, 2004), the court dismissed the religious discrimination and retaliation claims of a Christian teacher at a public school who was denied an accommodation to use last names only – rather than students’ preferred names and pronouns – to address students in his class. Persistent or intentional misgendering is unlawful. And, as this case demonstrates, refusing to ‘gender’ at all also can be unlawful.
Case Background
Brownsburg Community School Corporation (BCSC) implemented a policy that, if a student, the student’s parents, and a health care provider requested that the student be called by a preferred name, that name would be entered into the school’s official student database. Teachers were then required to call the student by that name.
John Kluge, a Music and Orchestra teacher at the BCSC high school, objected to the policy on religious grounds. Kluge identifies as Christian, leads youth and other ministries at his church, and is a member of the church’s board of elders, which is “part of the government of the church.” As a result of his faith, Kluge believes that it is sinful to promote gender dysphoria, that transgenderism is a sin, and that it is sinful for him to “encourage” students in transgenderism.
Kluge, therefore, sought from BCSC an accommodation permitting him to refer to students by their last names only. BCSC initially granted Kluge’s accommodation. However, BCSC withdrew the accommodation, finding that it was detrimental, not only to the wellbeing of transgender students, but also to the learning environment for other students and faculty. Specifically, students and teachers, alike, complained that Kluge’s behavior was insulting, offensive, and made his classroom environment unwelcoming and uncomfortable.
Procedural Background
Kluge ultimately resigned and sued BCSC and several of its employees, asserting 13 claims. Only the failure to accommodate and retaliation claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 survived BCSC’s early efforts to have the lawsuit dismissed. However, the court later granted BCSC’s motion to dismiss the failure to accommodate and retaliation claims as well.
Kluge appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. The Seventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal of Kluge’s claims. However, before the mandate in the case was issued, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Groff v. DeJoy, 143 S. Ct. 2279 (2023), in which it clarified the standard for undue hardship in Title VII religious accommodation cases. Before Groff, it was an undue hardship to require an employer to accommodate an employee’s religion if such accommodation resulted in anything beyond a “de minimis cost.” Groff raised the undue hardship bar. Now, it will be deemed an undue hardship on an employer if granting an accommodation would result in “substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business.”
As a result of Groff, the Seventh Circuit vacated its prior decision and remanded the case back to the lower court to apply the principles outlined in Groff. The parties, again, each sought pre-trial judgment in their favor. Because Groff did not change the analysis on Kluge’s retaliation claim, the court addressed only his religious discrimination (failure to accommodate) claim.
The Court’s Ruling on Remand
The court upheld its prior decision to dismiss Kluge’s religious discrimination claim. It reasoned that BCSC’s business is to educate all students and it seeks to do so by “fostering a learning environment of respect and affirmation.” Parents, medical professionals, administrators, and many students all agree that pursuing those goals require transgender students to be addressed by their preferred names and pronouns. The court believed that the evidence showed that Kluge’s use of the “last names only accommodation” burdened BCSC’s ability to achieve these goals and held that BCSC was not required to allow an accommodation that unduly burdened its business in that manner.
The court further found that the existence of the “last names only accommodation” placed BCSC at risk of substantial and disruptive litigation, which was even more serious given that Title IX violations place the entire school’s funding at risk. This risk imposed substantial increased costs on BCSC and, thus, was an undue burden as a matter of law, both independently and when viewed in combination with the harm and disruption to the school’s business.
As BCSC explained to its teachers, its “goal is not to change your personal beliefs”; rather, “when you work in a public school, you sign up to follow the law.”
Employer Takeaways
This case is a good reminder of the new standard for evaluating religious discrimination claims (substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business), as well as a good reminder that accommodations can be re-evaluated if new information leads to undue hardship.
The author of this article, Patricia Tsipras, is a member of the Bar of Pennsylvania. This article is designed to provide one perspective regarding recent legal developments, and is not intended to serve as legal advice in Pennsylvania, Indiana, or any other jurisdiction, nor does it establish an attorney-client relationship with any reader of the article where one does not exist. Always consult an attorney with specific legal issues.
