Vermont spent two years punishing 111 kids for their faith.
Now the state just learned what that decision actually cost.
The state that banned a Christian school from spelling bees just got the bill.
Vermont Banned a Christian School From Girls Sports for Two Years Over One Forfeit
In 2023, the Mid Vermont Christian School girls' basketball team faced a choice no team should ever have to make.
Forfeit a postseason game — or put their girls on the court against a biological male.
They forfeited, and Vermont punished the entire school — not just the basketball team, but every sport, every spelling bee, every science fair, every mathletes competition in the state — because a 111-student Christian school in Quechee believed what Vermont decided was a thought crime.
"Their message was, 'in order for you to follow your religious beliefs, boys are boys, girls are girls, that would actually violate their nondiscrimination policies,'" Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Dave Cortman told Fox News Digital.
"So the irony of it was, they were discriminating against religious schools."
Coach Chris Goodwin watched his players cry when he had to explain it.
"Because you play a 20-game season, and you put in the work and the expectation is that you enter the postseason tournament with a shot to see how you're going to do," Goodwin said.
What followed wasn't a one-season sacrifice.
It was two years of exile.
Road trips that used to be 20 minutes became hours across state lines.
Kids getting home at 10 pm trying to finish homework.
Home gyms that went quiet.
"The travel is probably triple," Goodwin said.
And the state didn't budge.
Vermont's education agencies argued their position all the way through federal court.
Federal Court Found Vermont Likely Violated the First Amendment Over Religious Freedom
The school fought back with Alliance Defending Freedom — the same legal organization that has now won settlements against school districts from Indiana to Texas to Vermont.
An Indiana school district paid ADF $650,000 after forcing a music teacher to resign for declining to use pronouns that violated his religious beliefs.
Mid Vermont's case took a different and more damaging path.
In September 2025, the Second Circuit found the Vermont Principals' Association likely violated the First Amendment — calling the punishment "unprecedented, overbroad, and procedurally irregular."
The court noted the VPA hadn't just banned the school.
It rushed to impose "immediate" expulsion while ignoring its own procedural rules — the formal investigation, the preliminary report, the written notice, the hearing.
None of it happened.
The VPA's Executive Director publicly attacked Mid Vermont's religious beliefs before state lawmakers while the organization fast-tracked the punishment.
The Second Circuit said that kind of hostility toward religion isn't policy enforcement.
It's discrimination.
Vermont reinstated the school while the case continued.
Goodwin led his team back onto the floor this season.
They made it all the way back to the Barre Auditorium — the old arena every Vermont player works four years to reach.
"When we won our quarterfinal game to get there, our senior captain who graduated a year ago, was talking on the phone to her sister who plays for me now, they're both crying on the phone," Goodwin said.
"Number one because of the joy of achieving a goal that they wanted to achieve, but also the sadness of her sister, who's a freshman in college now, not having that opportunity."
Two years Vermont took from those girls.
$566,000 is what it cost Vermont taxpayers to do it.
Vermont Signed a Settlement Over Religious Freedom and Then Did It Again
Vermont isn't a one-time story.
It's a pattern.
In 2022, Vermont paid a settlement after ADF sued the state for discriminating against religious families in its school tuition program.
Vermont officials signed an agreement — in writing — to apply tuition benefits fairly to religious schools.
Then they pulled this.
ADF has won favorable outcomes against school districts across the country for the same category of government hostility — officials deciding that religious beliefs are not just wrong, but disqualifying.
The Indiana teacher. The Oregon educators fired for expressing views on gender identity policy on their own time. The Houston family whose daughter's school refused to stop secretly treating her as a boy.
Every one of those cases ended with the government paying.
Cortman was direct about what the $566,000 actually means.
"The school is on the right side of history and will be for following his faith in its beliefs, for doing what's right," he said.
"Sometimes there's a price to pay. But it's always the right thing to do."
Vermont just found out what the price was.
The state that tried to use a male athlete policy to bankrupt a Christian school's extracurricular program cut a check large enough to fund years of that program instead.
The only people who came out worse were the woke bureaucrats who thought a small Christian school in Quechee would fold.
They were wrong.
Sources:
- Jackson Thompson, "Vermont pays $566K in damages, legal fees to Christian school it banned from all sports competitions for years," Fox News, April 28, 2026.
- "Excluding Religious School That 'Forfeited a Girls' Playoff Basketball Game to Avoid Playing a Team with a Transgender Athlete' Violated Free Exercise Clause," Reason/Volokh Conspiracy, September 10, 2025.
- "Vermont Christian School Likely to Prevail in Trans Athlete Suit," Bloomberg Law, September 9, 2025.
- "Federal appeals court reinstates Vt. Christian school after it objected to transgender player," First Amendment Center/MTSU, September 26, 2025.
- "Kluge v. Brownsburg Community School Corporation," ADF Media, March 3, 2026.
