It is a victory for free speech, unfortunately, the cost will be borne by the taxpayers of the town.
A Vermont school district punished a father and his daughter for speaking out against a biological male in the girls’ locker room. Now, The Daily Signal has learned, the district has settled with the Allen family in what its legal team is hailing as a “resounding victory.”
That settlement requires that the Vermont School Boards Insurance Trust pay $125,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees and costs to Travis Allen and Jessica Allen, on behalf of their daughter, Blake Allen, and their attorneys with the Alliance Defending Freedom.
Under the settlement, the district will reinstate Travis Allen, the father, as middle school soccer coach, and will scrub any records of discipline against Travis Allen and daughter Blake from school records.
Further, the settlement requires the Orange Southwest School District Board and school officials named in the Allens’ lawsuit to remove any content posted online by the school related to the locker room business as well as from the bulletin board or boards at Randolph Union Middle/High School displaying “love and support” messages to the trans-identifying student.
The Alliance Defending Freedom hailed the settlement as a huge win for the Allen family.
Of course, none of this money is going to come from the pockets of the school administrators, either from their salaries or their pensions. Perhaps if this was the case then school administrators might be more circumspect when trampling on the free speech rights of people they despise.
But when you consider that this is what the majority of Vermont citizens voted for, it would be natural for school administrators to believe that the State Courts and public opinion had their backs. I have zero sympathy for the taxpayers of Randolph Vermont.
Fortunately, the road to serfdom has not been as smooth as our “progressive” overlords” had hoped, and the tyranny of the majority at least temporally checked.