Vermont Principals’ Assoc. to Pay $566k After Banning Christian School from Sports League

In basketball, a player is typically allowed to commit five or six personal fouls before they are disqualified from the game for “fouling out.” It’s a rule set in place to make the game faster and fairer, especially when involving a team that can physically bully the other.

In one contest between a Vermont Christian school and the Vermont Principals’ Association, the latter has effectively “fouled out” after showing hostility to the team and their Christian school for their beliefs. The state-sponsored athletic association’s religious discrimination cost them over half a million dollars.

Meanwhile, other Vermont officials have continued to exclude all religious schools (including Mid Vermont) and their students from participating in the state’s tuition program and other public benefit programs.

Despite losing over and over again, Vermont continues to find ways to engage in religious discrimination.

What is Mid Vermont Christian School?

Mid Vermont Christian School is a private, Christian, pre-K through 12th-grade school in Quechee, Vermont. The school exists “to glorify God by preparing each student for college, career, and Christian ministry through a program of academic excellence established in Biblical truth.”

“At Mid Vermont Christian School, we strive to exemplify biblical truth in and through everything we do,” said the girls’ basketball coach, Chris Goodwin.

Mid Vermont Christian is a highly respected school that has excelled in both academics and athletics, and many families send their children to the school for these reasons. But that hasn’t stopped the state from targeting the school.

Benched for biblical beliefs

The largest sports association for middle and high schools in the state is the Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA). In 2023, the VPA expelled Mid Vermont Christian and then denied the school readmission from all VPA sports.

While the VPA’s general policy is to separate boys’ and girls’ athletics and to prevent boys from competing in girls’ sports “to protect opportunities for girl athletes,” it adopted a new policy which undermines that very principle. The policy required Vermont schools like Mid Vermont Christian to assign athletes to teams based on their “gender identity” rather than their actual sex, and it forces female athletes to compete in athletic events against males.

As a Christian school, Mid Vermont Christian believes that men and women are different and that sex cannot be changed. M.G., a Mid Vermont student who competed on the varsity girls’ basketball team, also holds these beliefs. But the policy would have forced M.G., Mid Vermont Christian, and many other students and their families to violate their beliefs.

As a result of the VPA’s policy, a male athlete who is over six feet tall was allowed to compete on the high school girls’ basketball team at the Long Trail School in Dorset, Vermont, during the 2022-23 season.

Mid Vermont Christian was matched up against Long Trail in the first round of the 2023 VPA Division 4 Girls’ State Basketball tournament. Mid Vermont Christian alerted the VPA that it had concerns over playing against the male athlete, but the VPA denied Mid Vermont Christian’s request for a conversation. So Mid Vermont Christian chose to forfeit the game instead of violating its religious beliefs by forcing its female athletes to play against a male. Shortly thereafter, the VPA announced it would immediately suspend Mid Vermont Christian from competing in all sports and activities.

The VPA first flouted its own policies and failed to provide Mid Vermont Christian with a notice of the alleged violations. And then the association submitted testimony hostile to the school’s beliefs to the Vermont legislature. Mid Vermont Christian appealed its expulsion internally at the VPA, but the VPA doubled down on the expulsion and said Mid Vermont’s religious reason for forfeiting the game was “wrong.”

Religious discrimination in state tuition program

Vermont didn’t just discriminate against Mid Vermont in sports. It’s also discriminating against the school in the state’s tuition programs.

Vermont has several state programs that allow state funding to go to private schools.

• The Town Tuition Program provides funding for students to attend a public school in another town or a private school if their school district doesn’t have a public high school.
• Likewise, the Dual Enrollment and Early College Programs provide public funding for eligible juniors and seniors in high school to dual-enroll in up to two courses at approved Vermont colleges.

Sadly, for decades, Vermont has repeatedly violated the rights of religious schools by finding ways to exclude them from these programs.

But after three Supreme Court decisions—Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia  v. Comer (2017), Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (2020), and Carson v. Makin (2022)—protecting religious schools, and having been rebuked twice by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in three other ADF cases, you would think that Vermont would have gotten the message by now that faith-based schools can’t be treated as second class compared to non-religious schools. But Vermont continues to violate that principle.

This time, instead of saying that religious schools couldn’t qualify for state funding due to their religious character, Vermont is trying to make state funding contingent on the schools agreeing to standards that knowingly violate their religious beliefs. This includes posting a “statement of nondiscrimination” for religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity, among other things. This would affect the religious schools’ admissions, employment, and internal policies such that they could no longer operate according to their religious beliefs.

Vermont also enacted a law in July 2025 (called Act 73), which creates a de facto exclusion of religious schools through requirements pertaining to the schools’ location, enrollment, and class sizes. The result: All 15 religious schools that were eligible for funding last year are now excluded from public funding.

A win on behalf of religious freedom

In November 2023, ADF attorneys filed a lawsuit against Vermont officials on behalf of Mid Vermont Christian. Initially, a district court denied the school’s request to allow its readmission into the VPA for all sports and receive state funds while the case proceeded.

ADF attorneys appealed the sports portion of the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. Fortunately, in September 2025, the 2nd Circuit ruled in favor of Mid Vermont Christian, handing it a crucial victory. In April 2026, after the case was sent back down to the district court, the VPA agreed to pay $566,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees to settle the sports portion of the lawsuit.

“The government cannot punish religious schools—and the families they serve—by permanently kicking them out of state-sponsored sports simply because the state disagrees with their religious beliefs,” said ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman, Vice President of U.S. Litigation.

Meanwhile, after Vermont enacted Act 73, ADF filed an amended complaint around the tuition portion of Mid Vermont’s lawsuit in January 2026. That part of the lawsuit is now before the district court again, with oral arguments being heard on May 8, 2026.

The bottom line

Religious schools and their families should not have to abandon their religious beliefs and practices to participate in public benefits programs like state-sponsored school athletics. Female athletes should not be forced to compete against males, and state agencies cannot show hostility towards religious schools that follow their beliefs.

Likewise, the government cannot force religious schools to violate their beliefs in order to participate in a generally available tuition funding program. Nor can it create arbitrary rules in order to exclude all religious schools.

Mid Vermont Christian School v. Saunders

• February 2023: Mid Vermont Christian forfeited a girls’ basketball game against a girls’ team with a male player. The forfeit knocked Mid Vermont Christian out of the state tournament.
• March 2023: The VPA immediately suspended Mid Vermont Christian from all athletic and academic competitions and sought to expel the school permanently.
• May 2023: The VPA’s Activity Standards Committee denied Mid Vermont Christian’s appeal of its expulsion.
• September 2023: Mid Vermont Christian sought readmission to the VPA, but the VPA requested the school explain how it would comply with the VPA’s gender identity policies.
• November 2023: ADF attorneys filed a lawsuit on behalf of Mid Vermont Christian, some students, and their families.
• June 2024: A federal district court denied the request for injunctive relief. ADF attorneys filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.
• August 2024: ADF attorneys filed their opening brief with the 2nd Circuit.
• April 2025: ADF attorneys delivered oral argument at the 2nd Circuit on Mid Vermont Christian’s request for injunctive relief against the VPA.
• July 2025: Vermont enacted Act 73, a law that creates a de facto exclusion of religious schools through requirements pertaining to the schools’ location, enrollment, and class sizes.
• September 2025: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled that Vermont must allow a Christian school to participate in the state’s athletic association while the case proceeds.
• April 2026: The VPA agrees to pay $566,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees to partially settle the Mid Vermont lawsuit. However, Vermont officials have continued to exclude all religious schools, including Mid Vermont, and their students from participating in the state’s tuition program and other public benefit programs.
• May 2026: Oral argument was heard in the district court regarding Mid Vermont being excluded from the state’s tuition program.