Girls Basketball Team Punished For Gender Stand Fights Back: 'Boys Are Boys'

A Vermont Christian school is forging a continued legal battle after being kicked out of a state-sponsored athletic league that puts its students at a profound disadvantage. Mid Vermont Christian School, a K-12 institution in Quechee, Vermont, found itself in the headlines last year after its girls' basketball team declined to play against a team that included a biological male. "The Mid Vermont Christian Girls Basketball team qualified for their state-sponsored sports league playoff tournament," Ryan Tucker, an attorney at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), told CBN News. "And when they were looking at the seedings, they knew that the team that they were paired up against had a biological male who was professing to be female." School officials reportedly reached out in advance to the Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA), the body overseeing athletics in the state, to express safety and religious concerns surrounding competing against a biological male. "They believe that boys are boys and girls are girls," Tucker said. "And that's the message that they instill and inculcate at their institution." But the VPA reportedly didn't provide another option for Mid Vermont Christian School, leading officials to forfeit the Feb. 21, 2023, game. "And, as a result, the state punished them by kicking them, not just obviously out of that tournament, but out of the sports association entirely," Tucker said. "And so their girl sports season ended and they've been kicked out of that league." According to ABC News, the VPA's executive council felt the school violated policies surrounding gender, race, and disability awareness and could, thus, no longer take part. Tucker said the school attempted to remedy the situation prior to the game, before the forfeiture, and even after they were kicked out. "They went back to the VPA ... several times, asking them to to reconsider and to think through what they've done before they went and filed a federal lawsuit," he said. Watch him explain.