A Wisconsin school district is paying the price after booting a teacher for standing by his religious convictions.
The Argyle School District agreed to a $20,000 settlement with Jordan Cernek, an English teacher who was shown the door for refusing to use transgender students’ preferred names and pronouns, as reported by The Daily Caller.
Cernek took legal action in July 2024, arguing that the district trampled on his First Amendment rights and violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His lawsuit, backed by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, laid out the stakes clearly.
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“Mr. Cernek has a sincerely held religious belief that God makes no mistakes when it comes to sex and gender,” the suit stated.
“Calling a transgender student by a name or pronouns at odds with their biological sex would cause Mr. Cernek to affirm that God made a mistake in creating a transgender person as a male or a female.”
In his view, complying with the policy would mean speaking a falsehood and violating his faith.
At first, the district offered a religious accommodation, allowing Cernek to sidestep the policy. But that changed when administrators later demanded full compliance, according to court documents.
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Cernek didn’t stay silent. He pushed back in an August 2022 meeting when officials rolled out the policy. Then, as the 2022-2023 school year began, two students identifying as transgender insisted that staff use their preferred names.
That put Cernek in the district’s crosshairs.
The case officially wrapped up in February after both parties agreed to the settlement. But Cernek’s victory isn’t an isolated event—it’s part of a growing pushback against forced compliance with radical gender ideology.
Across the country, teachers who’ve refused to go along with the pronoun charade have secured settlements after being punished for standing firm.
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In September, a Virginia school board settled with a high school teacher for $575,000 after firing him over the same issue.
Then in December, a middle school teacher in Ohio walked away with $450,000 after a federal court ruled that forcing teachers to use preferred pronouns amounted to “compelled speech.”
The pattern is clear: school districts that try to strong-arm educators into embracing leftist gender politics are getting burned. Cernek’s case is just another example of what happens when institutions trample on religious freedoms in pursuit of ideological conformity.
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