A California teacher has been awarded $360,000 to settle a suit about her dismissal from the Jurupa Valley Unified School District over her beliefs about transgenderism.
Jessica Tapia was hired by the district in 2014 as a gym teacher and coach. In the suit, she claims that she never used the wrong pronoun to identify a student or discriminated against any student for any reason.
But her Facebook page, where she never identified where she worked, contained several posts objecting to transgenderism and expressing her Christian faith. When some students saw that, they reported her to the administration.
After a series of meetings where Tapia was asked several hypothetical questions, including whether she would keep from the parents a child's choice of gender, the school board fired her.
"That third and final meeting in January 2023 was the religious accommodation meeting where I was questioned up and down on my Christian faith," Tapia said. "And at the end of that, they decided from that that they could not accommodate my religious beliefs and were therefore firing me."
The lawsuit says the district accused her of "posting offensive content on her public Instagram account, referencing her faith during conversations with students, and expressing controversial opinions on issues pertaining to gender identity." In the second meeting, the district presented Tapia with "A Plan of Assistance and Directives," which required that she "lie to parents about their children’s gender identity, refer to students by their preferred pronouns, refrain from expressing her religious beliefs with students or on her social media, and allow students to use the bathroom or locker room that matched their preferred sex."
Tapia sought a religious accommodation, arguing she would not be able to comply with the directives because they went against her beliefs.
"I could have saved my life. When I say life in this circumstance, I'm obviously meaning my teaching career, my salary; I could have saved it myself. I could have taken control of that. I could have saved it by just saying yes and bowing down to these directives," Tapia said. "But, you know, I chose to realize that, you know, God is in control. He's in control of my life. And if I do lose my life or lose … my job in this situation, I don't know how that's going to look, but somehow God's going to show me my life, or I'm going to find my life. I'm going to find my true purpose, by choosing Him, by choosing to stand in the truth here."
Tapia's attorney, Julianne Fleischer of Advocates for Faith & Freedom, points out that what the school district did in firing Tapia is happening across the country.
"The school district specifically terminated her because of her religious beliefs," Fleischer said. "What we're seeing with these types of directives at school districts across the nation as they're implementing these different transgender policies and threatening teachers and educators with termination from their employment is a type of religious test … because what they're essentially saying is you need to ascribe to our own religion or you're no longer qualified to serve as a public school teacher. And so, Jessica's religious beliefs become second class to the school district's ideology as it relates to transgender and transgender policies."
Across the country, teachers are being ordered to comply with the diktats coming from school districts about transgenderism. Use the correct pronouns or get fired. Keep your mouth shut about a child's gender choice, and don't tell the kid's parents or get canned.
Give in to the entire gender ideology or find other employment. Gender dysphoria is a serious mental condition, and not telling parents that their child is afflicted with it is akin to not telling them their child has a serious physical disease.
It's madness, of course. And the radical left administrators and school boards who are pushing this madness need to be stopped before permanent damage is done to students and the teachers trying to help them.
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