Maryland Forces Teacher to Pick Between Her Conscience and Her Job

Every job requires something of the people who do it. But no one should be forced to say something they believe is a lie just to keep their job. And when the employer is the government, the Constitution forbids it from forcing its employees to personally endorse the government’s viewpoint on controversial issues like gender identity.

Yet, across the country, thousands of schoolteachers work in school districts with policies that do just that. Teachers must use pronouns inconsistent with the student’s sex and keep that fact from the student’s parents unless the child says otherwise. For a teacher who sees pronouns as a matter of truth rather than personal preference, there’s no soft landing in that policy—just a choice between one’s job and one’s conscience.

Montgomery County, Maryland, put that very choice to a substitute teacher named Kim Polk.

An impossible choice

Kim did everything right.

She substitute-taught for Montgomery County Public Schools during the 2021–2022 school year, built up her students, and treated them the way any good mother and teacher would—with courtesy, respect, and an eye toward what was best for each child. The feedback she received was “very positive.” Kim expected the district would want her to sub more the following year, ideally three full days a week.

Instead, she effectively got an ultimatum: Betray your conscience or lose your ability to teach.

In August 2022, Kim signed in to MCPS’s teacher portal for mandatory training and learned that she would have to affirm that she would comply with the district’s Guidelines for Student Gender Identity. Among other requirements, to keep teaching, she would have to confirm two things. First, that she would use a student’s “preferred” pronouns—even when those pronouns don’t match the student’s sex. Second, that she would hide from parents if their child was socially “transitioning” to a different gender at school, unless the child expressly consented.

Kim is a Christian. She believes God creates people male or female and that calling a child by a pronoun that denies that reality would mean lying to that child. She also believes parents, not the school district, hold the God-given responsibility to raise their kids. Hiding a child’s “gender transition” from a parent isn’t a technicality to her. It’s a betrayal of that responsibility.

Still, Kim hoped to keep teaching in Montgomery County schools—especially in the lower grades where she is less likely to have a student who identifies as transgender. So she asked the school district for an accommodation instead of walking away.

MCPS rejects the accommodation it helped craft

Kim initially tried to reach a compromise that everyone could be happy with. She offered to use a student’s preferred name and to limit her substitute work to elementary schools and the preschool special-education program, where the policy’s pronoun mandate was less likely to be an issue. She just didn’t want to be forced to use biologically incorrect pronouns. And she didn’t want to have to lie to parents.

An MCPS official actually discussed a possible accommodation with her that would have allowed her to keep teaching without having to violate her beliefs. But then the school district rejected that accommodation less than a month later, once again putting Kim in an impossible position. Unable to violate her conscience just to keep her job, Polk filed this lawsuit.

What happened in Kim’s case?

A federal district court dismissed Kim’s free exercise and free speech claims in January 2025. A divided 2-1 panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit affirmed that dismissal a year later.

Vigorously dissenting from that decision, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson wrote that the majority’s logic would let a school district “mandate that teachers voice opinions contrary to their own without any First Amendment protection whatsoever.” Weighing Kim’s objection against the district’s interests, Judge Wilkinson wrote that the balance tipped in Kim’s favor as clearly as if “MCPS were playing seesaw with a lead block.” The school district’s violation of Kim’s First Amendment rights should have been obvious.

But that was not the last stop for Kim’s case.

In June 2026, Kim, represented by a coalition of attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom; Claybrook LLC; Gammon & Grange, P.C.; and the National Legal Foundation, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear her case, Polk v. Montgomery County Public Schools.

This isn’t the first time Montgomery County has tried to keep parents in the dark

Montgomery County isn’t a stranger to these fights. In Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025), the Supreme Court already ruled against this same board of education—holding that it had to notify parents and allow religious opt-outs from instruction using “LGBTQ+-inclusive” books.

Kim’s case raises the next natural question: If parents have a right to know their child is being taught particular ideas about sexuality and gender, do teachers have a right not to be forced to keep parents in the dark when their child is living out those ideas at school, hour by hour, with the district’s help and without their parents’ consent?

Again, the answer should be obvious.

The bottom line

The stakes of this case reach well past one Maryland classroom. Thousands of teachers nationwide are dealing with school-district policies containing similar compelled-pronoun and secret-transition requirements. And millions of parents send their K–12 students to those same schools.

The government cannot compel a teacher to speak messages she believes to be false, and it cannot enlist her to keep parents in the dark about what’s happening to their own children at school.

Polk v. Montgomery County Public Schools

• August 2022: After a successful campaign substitute teaching in the 2021-2022 school year, Kim learns she will be forced to affirm that she will comply with her school district’s Guidelines for Student Gender Identity, which violate her beliefs.
• November 2022: Kim formally requests a religious accommodation.
• December 2022: MCPS’s compliance coordinator discusses and outlines the terms of a possible accommodation with Kim. But MCPS later rejected the accommodation request that its own staff had helped craft.
• May 2024: Kim files suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, alleging religious discrimination, free exercise, and free speech violations.
• January 2025: The district court rejects Kim’s free exercise and free speech claims.
• February 2025: Kim appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.
• January 2026: A divided 4th Circuit panel affirms the dismissal.
• June 2026: Kim’s legal team files a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear her case.