Vermont Already Paid for Banning Christian Schools from Sports, Yet They’re Still Banning Christian Schools from Education Benefits

Vermont has made it no secret that it’s willing to discriminate against religious families and schools. From basketball games to tuition aid, Vermont has repeatedly attempted to write laws and enforce rules that violate the rights of religious schools and families.

In one recent example, Mid Vermont Christian School was targeted by the Vermont Principals’ Association, showing hostility to the Christian school’s girls’ basketball team for their beliefs about biological sex and how that ought to impact sports. The state-sponsored athletic association’s religious hostility would go on to cost them over half a million dollars.

Despite that pricey setback, Vermont continues to double down on religious discrimination. State 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.

This is wrong. If Vermont wants to make tuition aid generally available to everyone, it must make that same opportunity available for religious schools and their students as well. Multiple courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have made this clear.

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 and other religious families.

Religious discrimination in Vermont’s tuition program

Perhaps nothing illustrates Vermont’s disdain for religious schools like the way it has treated Mid Vermont Christian School. The school has effectively been blocked from having its families apply for tuition aid.

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 Program provides public funding for eligible juniors and seniors in high school to dual-enroll in up to two courses at approved Vermont colleges. And the Early College Program allows high school seniors to enroll full time in college courses during their final year of high school.

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 families, and after having been rebuked twice by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in other ADF cases, you would think that Vermont would have gotten the message by now that faith-based schools can’t be treated worse compared to non-religious schools. But Vermont continues to violate that principle.

To circumvent those court rulings, Vermont enacted Act 73 in July 2025 under the guise of increasing educational opportunities, when in reality, it does anything but.

Act 73 allows tuition funding only for schools that meet three new requirements: located in a district without a public school, at least 25% of enrollment must have been publicly funded in 2023–24, and class-size minimums. Together, these requirements work as a de facto exclusion of religious schools. None of the 15 religious schools that were eligible in the 2024–2025 school year, including Mid Vermont, remains eligible, while many secular schools do.

And it’s not just in classrooms where Vermont has been openly hostile to Christian schools. It was happening on the hardwood, too.

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.”

Winning 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.

Meanwhile, after Vermont enacted Act 73, ADF filed an amended complaint around the tuition portion of Mid Vermont’s lawsuit in January 2026. After the district court denied our motion for preliminary injunction, ADF appealed to the 2nd Circuit. Oral arguments were heard in September.

“Religious schools and the families they serve aren’t second-class citizens, yet Vermont continues to treat them as such by excluding them from a public benefit available to most non-religious private schools,” said ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman, vice president of U.S. litigation. “All parents should be able to send their kids to schools that are the best fit for them, and the First Amendment protects parents’ right to choose religious schools.”

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.
• January 2026: ADF files an amended complaint to challenge the recently enacted Act 73.
• 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: A federal court denied Mid Vermont’s motion for preliminary injunction that would allow it to be eligible for public benefits, leading ADF to appeal to the 2nd Circuit.
• September 2026: Oral argument was held before the 2nd Circuit.