Update:

The Virginia Supreme Court has sided with a lower court’s decision to temporarily reinstate Byron Tanner Cross, a Leesburg Elementary school teacher, after he stated at a school board meeting that he would not refer to transgender students by their correct pronouns, which he would have been required to do by a school policy under consideration at the meeting.

The court dismissed the school system’s concerns that Cross might endanger the wellbeing of students, and found that the school system’s additional arguments did not rise to the level of overriding his and other teachers’ “interests in exercising their constitutionally protected right to speak.”

Since Cross’ public comments in May, the Loudoun County school board passed the policy, which mandates that transgender students be allowed to participate in school activities and be spoken to according to their gender identity.

In response, Cross’ legal team, the conservative Christian group Alliance Defending Freedom, says it will seek to expand the existing lawsuit to include two more Loudoun County teachers, Loudoun County High School history teacher Monica Gill and Smart’s Mill Middle School English teacher Kim Wright.

Original story:

The legal battle over a Loudoun County teacher’s stance on how to refer to transgender students is continuing, with the opposing sides now arguing over whether the Virginia Supreme Court should take up the matter or not.

Attorneys for the teacher, Byron Tanner Cross, asked the court on Wednesday to reject an appeal from Loudoun County Public Schools, which is fighting a lower court’s decision mandating that Cross be reinstated after he was suspended for declaring he would not refer to transgender students by their correct pronouns.

WTOP was first to report this latest development in the case.

Cross, a physical education instructor at Leesburg Elementary School, was suspended from his job after commenting at a school board meeting in May that he was opposed to using students’ correct pronouns because of his Christian faith. The school board was discussing a policy that would require school staff to respect students’ pronouns and guarantee their access to restrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their gender identity.

“I will not affirm that a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa, because it’s against my religion,” Cross said at the time.

In response to his suspension, Cross sued the school system. He is being represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group. Cross’s lawyers have argued that public schools do not have the right to suspend a teacher over “providing their opinion.”

In June, a Virginia judge sided with Cross and ordered Loudoun County Public Schools to immediately reinstate him until a full trial can be held. Loudoun County Circuit Court Judge James Plowman wrote that the school system’s decision was “extreme,” “vindictive,” and unconstitutional — and had “silenced others from speaking publicly on the issue.”

The school system then announced it would appeal the court’s ruling to the Supreme Court of Virginia. In a June 11 statement, the school system wrote that both the elementary school and the school system had experienced “significant disruption” since the board meeting where Cross made the comments about transgender students.

“Many students and parents at Leesburg Elementary have expressed fear, hurt, and disappointment about coming to school,” wrote the school system. “While LCPS respects the rights of public-school employees to free speech and free exercise of religion, those rights do not outweigh the rights of students to be educated in a supportive and nurturing environment.”

In the reply brief filed Wednesday, Cross’s legal team argued that the state Supreme Court should not take up the case.

“The lower court’s decision ordering Tanner’s reinstatement was a well-reasoned application of these facts to clearly established law, so there is no reason for the Virginia Supreme Court to take this appeal,” ADF Senior Counsel Tyson Langhofer wrote in a press release. “The school district wants to force Tanner to endorse its ideals and shut down any opposing views. That violates the Constitution and laws of Virginia, and so did the school’s move to place Tanner on leave.”

“I think what he would just like everybody to to know is that that he should be free to speak and that no teacher, regardless of their views, whether they agree with Tanner or not, should be punished for simply sharing their views in a public meeting on a really important public policy topic,” said Langhofer in an interview with DCist/WAMU.

The latest development in the case comes amidst a wave of anti-trans bills being debated in state legislatures across the country, largely targeting the areas of sports and medical care.

In Loudoun County, the debate over the rights of transgender students has also intensified since the school system’s June 11 statement. Last week, a particularly chaotic school board meeting ended in an arrest and the declaration of an unlawful assembly. Members of the public sparred with the board over the same transgender student rights policy that Cross had opposed.

Many parents and community members testified in support of transgender students and their rights, but others voiced opposition to both the policy about transgender student rights — as well as the idea of teaching students about racism.

The scene got increasingly tense as the meeting ended and some people refused to leave. Police said a person at the meeting physically threatened another attendee, and was eventually arrested after resisting police. The schools superintendent ultimately declared the gathering an unlawful assembly.

When the school board reconvened later that evening, Board Chair Brenda Sheridan said that progressive members of the school board had been experiencing a rise in hateful messages and violent threats, including graphic email and voicemail messages.

“We will not back down from fighting for the rights of our students and continuing our focus on equity,” said Sheridan. “We will continue to work towards making Virginia, specifically Loudoun, the best place to raise a family. We will continue to move Virginia forward.”

Longtime LGBTQ+ advocate Robert Norris Rigby, who teaches in Fairfax County Public Schools, told the Washington Post that other LGBTQ people in Northern Virginia were “shocked by how violent the mob was” at the meeting.

“It does feel like Loudoun is unsafe,” Norris Rigby told the outlet. “It makes people elsewhere worry about whether this is coming for us.”

Langhofer, Cross’s attorney, said that because the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision involves an appeal of an injunction and not a final judgment, he expects a decision about whether it will take up the case “fairly quickly”— perhaps within a couple of weeks.

But, he added, the court ultimately has discretion about when it makes that decision. No matter what the state Supreme Court decides, the case will go to trial in Circuit Court, which Langhofer expects to happen sometime this fall.