Christian Teacher’s Student Pronoun Suit Faces Wary 7th Cir. (1)

The Seventh Circuit on Wednesday seemed torn on how to resolve a Christian teacher’s claim that he was subjected to bias when his accommodation from using transgender students’ preferred names and pronouns was rescinded.

At issue before Judges Ilana D. Rovner, Michael B. Brennan, and Amy J. St. Eve is whether permitting John Kluge to address all students by their last names only imposed an “undue hardship” on Brownsburg Community School Corp. under the clarified test the US Supreme Court recently set in Groff v. DeJoy.

The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit queried counsel for Kluge and the school district on whether Kluge suggested other accommodations, how the school district’s business mission should be defined, and whether emotional harm to students can be enough to meet the Groff standard. The judges also wanted to know how and where to draw the line between offense over a worker’s religious beliefs or accommodation and emotional harm that can rise to the level of an undue hardship.

Several other US employers are facing or have faced similar lawsuits and attorneys familiar with Kluge’s suit say the Seventh Circuit’s decision on his appeal could influence courts elsewhere, especially in cases involving the public-school context.

Kluge says Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act obligated the school district to keep the last-names-only concession in place, or to offer another accommodation, because his faith prohibits him from promoting gender dysphoria. Brownsburg says the accommodation disrupted the learning environment, harming transgender and other students, and exposed it to legal liability.

‘Substantial Increased Costs’

Groff held that a religious accommodation can only be denied if it imposes “substantial increased costs” on the employer’s overall business, rejecting a “more than de minimis” harm test that many federal courts had used for years.

Under Groff, the burden is on the employer to explore alternative approaches if a religious accommodation is tried and creates problems, Kluge’s attorney David A. Cortman of Alliance Defending Freedom said.

Brownsburg never proposed any accommodation for Kluge’s faith-based objection to using transgender students’ designated names and pronouns despite repeatedly meeting with the former music and orchestra teacher, Cortman said. It was Kluge who came up with the last-names-only idea, and he would have been fired if he hadn’t, the lawyer said.

The school district can set its mission, it just can’t do so in a way that violates workers’ religious rights, the lawyer said. Through the preferred-name policy it adopted in advance of the 2017-2018 school year, Brownsburg set its mission in a way that forced Kluge to violate his beliefs by speaking a message he doesn’t agree with, Cortman said.

Emotional harm can be enough to show undue hardship, Cortman said in response to a question from St. Eve. But the evidence was only that students were offended.

As to where to draw the line, “it can’t be just what students want,” the attorney said in response to another St. Eve question.

And Groff expressly took the sort of complaints Kluge’s accommodation spurred “off the table” when analyzing undue hardship, he said.

‘Open to All’

Analyzing the school district’s mission begins at a level of generality and then drills down from there, Brownsburg’s attorney Brent R. Borg of Church Church Hittle & Antrim said, picking up on a question posed by Brennan.

At the general level, Indiana law requires Brownsburg to provide an education “open to all,” Borg said. Adopting the policy was a way to ensure that happened at the high school where Kluge taught as it was getting ready to receive transgender students that year, and the school district wanted to provide a safe and inclusive environment, he said.

Teachers weren’t require to affirm gender identity, because they were just using the first names students designated in a school database, the attorney said. Brownsburg tried to accommodate Kluge even after it began to receive complaints and concerns, but the use of last names only disrupted the learning environment, Borg said.

If how many students were disrupted and how deep the disruption was are proper considerations, “we don’t really know how broad” the effect was here, Brennan said.

One student dreaded going to class and another left the school, Borg said.

“I’m having a tremendous problem” with the notion that substantial harm wasn’t shown just because allegedly only a handful of students were affected by the accommodation, Rovner said to Cortman. She doubted that would be the view if the situation involved disabled students or race issues.

The context under Groff is the entire school, Cortman said.

Rovner also pointed to Kluge having used students’ designated names during a year-end awards ceremony and wondered why that didn’t show an accommodation wasn’t really necessary.

The case is Kluge v. Brownsburg Cmty. Sch. Corp., 7th Cir., No. 24-01942, oral argument 1/22/25.