Plaintiff sued Defendant for discrimination, harassment, and retaliation on the basis of religion. Plaintiff alleged that he was terminated because of a conflict between his religious beliefs and the school's transgender policy.

Plaintiff alleged that in 2017 Defendant began to allow transgender students to officially go by a name of their choosing. Additionally, employees were instructed to use students' preferred names. When Plaintiff told the Superintendent that the requirement conflicted with his religious beliefs, he was allegedly told that he could either use the preferred names of transgender students, say that he was forced to resign, or be terminated without pay. Afterwards, Plaintiff requested a religious beliefs accommodation to address all students by their last names only. The Superintendent agreed to the accommodation, but a few months later Plaintiff was allegedly told that the accommodation created tension and that he should resign by the end of the school year. Plaintiff asserts that his religious accommodation was eventually withdrawn due to students being offended by it. Allegedly, the Superintendent once again advised Plaintiff to resign and Plaintiff submitted a conditional resignation to leave at the end of the year. However, according to Plaintiff he rescinded his resignation 4 days before the resignation date and was terminated two hours after the rescission was received.

On September 9, 2019, Defendants filed a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. They argued that Plaintiff's failure to accommodate claim fails because there wasn't an objective conflict between his teaching duties and his religious beliefs. Defendants argued that requiring all faculty to address students by the name listed in the database was purely administrative and not to force faculty to show support for or endorse transgender issues. As for the retaliation claim, Defendants asserted that there wasn't a causal connection between the protected activity and Plaintiff's termination. Additionally, Defendants argued that Plaintiff did not allege enough facts to support a hostile work environment claim nor could he support his First Amendment claims. Defendant argued that Plaintiff's refusal to address students by their chosen name wasn't protected speech since he was a public employee whose speech was in pursuant to his official teaching duties.

On January 8, 2020, the court granted in part and denied in part Defendant's motion to dismiss. The court dismissed Plaintiff's claims regarding the First Amendment, hostile work environment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and state law. However, the court allowed Plaintiff's failure to accommodate and retaliation claims to proceed due to the allegations being sufficient enough to support them.

On January 28, 2021, Plaintiff filed a motion for partial summary judgment on his failure to accommodate claim.

On March 15, 2021, Defendants filed a motion for summary judgment in its favor on the failure to accommodate and retaliation claims.

On July 12, 2021, the court granted Defendants motion for summary judgment on the failure to accommodate and retaliation claims. The court held that Plaintiff was not coerced into resigning and Defendant could not accommodate his religious beliefs without undue hardship. Additionally, the court found that the evidence demonstrated that Defendants never told Plaintiff that his resignation could be conditional or that it could be withdrawn for any reason. Lastly, the court found that Plaintiff failed to make a meaningful argument or produce evidence that would support the retaliation claim.

On August 10, 2021, Plaintiff appealed the district court's decision.

On August 7, 2023, the Court of Appeals sent the case back to the district court so that it could apply the Supreme Court's clarification in Groff v. DeJoy of the standard to be applied in religious accommodation cases.

On April 30, 2024, the district court granted Defendants motion for summary judgment. It ruled that the Supreme Court in Groff held that "undue hardship is to be viewed within the context of a particular business, not a particular employee". Given Defendants' mission to foster a safe and inclusive learning environment for all the children it serves, acceding to Plaintiff's accommodation could risk harming students and the learning environment, as well as lead to litigation. Due to the harm and risk of liability, the court held that Plaintiff's accommodation was an undue burden to Defendant.

On May 29, 2024, Plaintiff appealed the district court's decision.

On August 5, 2025, the court affirmed the district court's decision to not revisit Plaintiff's retaliation claim, as well as its denial of summary judgment to him on that issue.

On January 23, 2026, the parties settled the case.