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.
Sadly, the state of Vermont has a history of discriminating against faith-based schools. From excluding Rice Memorial High School and their students from its tuition assistance program because they were religious to barring access to its Dual Enrollment Program for students at those schools, Vermont has repeatedly violated the First Amendment.
And now Vermont’s state-sponsored athletic association has been reprimanded by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit after it banned Mid Vermont Christian School from participating in sports due to the school’s religious beliefs that God creates us male and female.
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.
State officials outright banned the school from competing in middle school and high school sports because of the school’s religious beliefs and practices.
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 student enrolled at Mid Vermont Christian who competes 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.
We must stand up for female athletes
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 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.”
Winning on behalf of religious freedom
In November 2023, ADF attorneys filed a lawsuit against Vermont officials on behalf of Mid Vermont Christian. After a district court denied the school’s injunction request that would have allowed it readmission into the VPA for all sports, ADF attorneys appealed the case to the 2nd Circuit.
Fortunately, in September 2025, the 2nd Circuit ruled in favor of Mid Vermont Christian, handing it a crucial victory.
“The VPA likely violated Mid Vermont’s First Amendment right to free exercise of religion because its consideration of Mid Vermont’s case was not neutral,” the ruling reads.
The court went on to explain: “[the VPA] acted with hostility toward Mid Vermont’s religious beliefs. The VPA’s Executive Director publicly castigated Mid Vermont—and religious schools generally—while the VPA rushed to judgment on whether and how to discipline the school. In upholding the expulsion, the VPA doubled down on that hostility by challenging the legitimacy of the school’s religious beliefs. And … the punishment imposed was unprecedented, overbroad, and procedurally irregular. Those facts strongly support the inference that Mid Vermont’s religious objection ‘was not considered with the neutrality that the Free Exercise Clause requires.’”
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.
And it’s clear the 2nd Circuit agrees. Because of the 2nd Circuit’s ruling, Mid Vermont Christian School will no longer be barred from VPA athletics, while the case proceeds, simply for forfeiting one basketball game.
This win for Mid Vermont Christian ensures that state officials in the Green Mountain State cannot show hostility toward religious schools and their students. Will you give to support other cases protecting the right of people of faith to live out their beliefs without facing government punishment?
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