Overview

• The New York-based appeals court issued a preliminary order requiring the Vermont Principals’ Association to allow Mid Vermont Christian School to compete while the case continues.
• The panel said the VPA likely violated the Free Exercise Clause, highlighting Executive Director Jay Nichols’s comments to lawmakers and calling the punishment unprecedented, overbroad, and procedurally irregular.
• The ruling reverses a district court decision that had left in place the school’s 2023 expulsion after it forfeited a girls’ playoff game rather than face a team with a transgender player.
• The VPA has declined substantive comment on the pending case and denies religious animus, arguing that barring a transgender athlete would violate its nondiscrimination policy and Vermont law.
• Alliance Defending Freedom represents the school, and the dispute advances as the U.S. Supreme Court plans to review Idaho and West Virginia transgender-athlete bans this fall.