Pronoun Payout for Christian Teacher

A federal appeals court in Indiana settled a religious discrimination case for $650,000. A federal appeals court in Maryland threw out a nearly identical one. Both cases asked whether a public school can require a teacher to use a transgender student's pronouns. The Indiana teacher walked away with a major payday and his legal fees covered. The Maryland teacher walked away with nothing.

That Indiana case belongs to John Kluge, a former orchestra teacher at Brownsburg High School near Indianapolis. His settlement made headlines back in March. Four months later, with a different circuit ruling the opposite way on a nearly identical set of facts, Kluge's case has become something bigger: the clearest marker yet of how divided American courts remain on faith and gender identity in public schools.

What Actually Happened in Brownsburg?

Kluge taught music at Brownsburg for four years before the district adopted a 2017 policy requiring teachers to use transgender students' chosen names and pronouns. Kluge negotiated an accommodation: he would call students by last name only, the way a coach might. That arrangement lasted about a year, until several students and colleagues complained that his practice singled trans students out... cisgender students were still being referred to by Kluge using their first names and preferred/biological pronouns. The district revoked the accommodation, and Kluge decided to resign rather than comply with the policy. Then, he sued.

The complaints were not abstract. At a fall 2017 meeting of Brownsburg's Equality Alliance Club, several students raised concerns about the teacher's last-names-only practice, and others in the room indicated they'd noticed it too. Court records describe one student turning to a classmate mid-year just to ask why their teacher would not simply use his name. No one needed the full backstory explained to notice that something in that classroom felt off.

Kluge's own conduct undercut the idea that last names were simply neutral. At the music department's year-end awards ceremony, he used students' actual first names, including the names transgender students had chosen, because he judged last-names-only too conspicuous for a formal event. The classroom, apparently, was a different story. Some of Kluge's own students later disputed that any of this caused real harm, so the two sides never fully agreed on what students actually experienced.

Lower courts sided with the district twice, including a 2023 appellate panel that found the last-names-only arrangement left trans students "disrespected, targeted, and dehumanized." The Supreme Court's ruling in Groff v. DeJoy later that year then substantially raised the bar employers must clear to deny a religious accommodation, and the Seventh Circuit revived Kluge's case and sent it toward a jury trial last August. Brownsburg settled in March rather than risk a verdict, agreeing to pay the teacher $650,000 and re-train staff.

Whose Beliefs Should Bend?

Kluge's own words capture the belief behind this case. He has reportedly said that using a transgender student's chosen name and pronouns would send them down "a path that's going to lead to destruction, to hell," and that he could not, as a Christian, take part in that. His attorneys at ADF argue that schools refusing any religious accommodation are inviting expensive lawsuits, and for many conservative Christians, Kluge's fight reads as vindication of a sincerely held conviction.

But the courts that actually heard evidence in this case did not find a neutral compromise. Judges found that Kluge's last-names-only approach made transgender students feel isolated in their own classroom, a burden placed on no other student. Trans youth already face disproportionate rates of bullying, harassment, and mental health crises at school. A teacher's refusal to use a student's name is rarely just a matter of grammar to the student sitting in that seat.

The stakes here are not abstract. A Trevor Project analysis of national survey data found that transgender and nonbinary youth whose pronouns were respected by the people around them reported a past-year suicide attempt rate of 11 percent, compared to 17 percent among those whose pronouns were not. Statistically, consistent pronoun use was tied to roughly a third lower likelihood of a suicide attempt, even after researchers controlled for other factors.

Where Does This Leave Trans Students Now?

The split is already spreading. In February, the Fourth Circuit upheld a Maryland school district's pronoun policy (which requires that educator's use student's preferred pronouns) against a nearly identical religious liberty claim, ruling that a substitute teacher agreed to the district's terms the day she took the job. ULC has tracked this fight for years: we asked whether Christian teachers could be forced to use transgender students' pronouns back in February, and covered Kluge's original resignation all the way back in 2018.

Kansas math teacher Pamela Ricard's ongoing suit, which ULC also covered, illustrates further that this fight is not confined to one state or circuit. Each dispute turns on the same question: how far Title VII's protections stretch before costing transgender students their sense of safety at school. Until the Supreme Court resolves the split, expect more settlements like Kluge's, more decisions like Maryland's, and no lasting answer for the students caught in between.

Should the same Title VII standard that protects a religious objection to Sunday work shifts also protect a religious objection to using a student's chosen name? Where should schools draw the line between a teacher's conscience and a student's sense of safety in the classroom? And with the circuit courts themselves divided, is it fair to leave a teenager to sort out the answer alone?