Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—RELIGIOUS—7th Cir.: Jury to decide whether allowing teacher to call transgender students by last names caused undue hardship, (Aug 6, 2025)

By Kathleen Kapusta, J.D.

The teacher argued that it was a sin to call transgender students names that conflicted with their biological sex and encouraged their transgender identities.

On appeal for the second time after having vacated its prior opinion following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Groff decision, the Seventh Circuit, reversing summary judgment to a school district on the Title VII religious discrimination claim of a high school orchestra teacher, found fact issues as to whether allowing him to call transgender students by their last names only posed an undue hardship on the district. The appeals court, however, affirmed the lower court’s decision not to revisit the teacher’s retaliation claim and its denial of summary judgment as to his sincerity. Judge Rovner, dissenting, argued that “the court invites a jury to do what we have always said a federal court will not do, which is to sit as a super-personnel department and second-guess the employer’s good-faith reasoning” (Kluge v. Brownsburg Community School Corp, No. 24-1942 (7th Cir. Aug. 5, 2025)).

To address “significant challenges” faced by transgender students, the school adopted a policy requiring teachers to call students by their first names as they appeared in a database in which students could make changes to their names after providing letters from a parent and healthcare professional. Contending that this conflicted with his religious beliefs, the teacher proposed as an accommodation that he be allowed to call students by only their last names.

Complaints. The school agreed but during the school year, it received a handful of complaints about this practice by students, faculty, and parents. According to two transgender students, the practice caused them emotional distress and harm, other students thought the practice made transgender students stand out, two teachers claimed the practice made students feel uncomfortable, and one parent accused the teacher of using improper gender terminology, although another staff member in the class disputed this.

As a result, the school told the teacher that for the following school year, he had to refer to students by their names as they appeared in the database. Although he reiterated the conflict with his religious beliefs, he was told that if he did not agree to do so, he would be fired. He was also told that he could submit a resignation letter and request that it not be processed until the end of the school year.

Resignation. He submitted what he thought was a conditional resignation. Not long after that, he participated in an awards ceremony recognizing orchestra students at which he called students by their first and last names as they appeared in the database. Shortly after that, the school treated his resignation as effective and locked him out of the building. He was officially terminated the following month.

Prior court decisions. The teacher sued, asserting claims under Title VII for failure to accommodate and retaliation. The district court denied the teacher’s motion for summary judgment on his accommodation claim but found that the accommodation placed an undue hardship on the school. It also granted summary judgment against the teacher’s retaliation claim.

Groff. On appeal, a divided Seventh Circuit panel affirmed the religious accommodation issue and agreed that the retaliation claim failed. After the opinion issued, the Supreme Court issued Groff v. DeJoy, in which it clarified that, for Title VII undue hardship purposes, instead of showing only a “de minimis cost,” employers must demonstrate “a burden [that] is substantial in the overall context of” its business.

The appeals court then vacated its prior decision and remanded to the district court to apply the clarified standard to the teacher’s religious accommodation claim. After the parties again moved for summary judgment, the district court reaffirmed its prior ruling regarding the teacher’s religious accommodation claim, even under Groff’s heightened standard.

School’s mission. On appeal to the Seventh Circuit for the second time, the school argued that the accommodation interfered with its “mission” of “fostering a safe, inclusive learning environment for all” students. But while this mission was written in a file that was distributed at a faculty meeting, the court pointed out that it was not adopted by the school board during the period in question as required by state law. Even assuming it was validly adopted, there was no evidence, said the court, demonstrating an “excessive” or “unjustifiable” hardship on the mission.

Emotional harm. There was no evidence that any student’s safety was in jeopardy or any allegations of threatened physical harm or verbal abuse. Although students stated that the accommodation made them feel “alienated, upset, and dehumanized,” and “made the classroom environment very awkward” and two students felt “emotional distress and harm,” the court found conflicting evidence as to whether calling students by their last names, by itself, caused that harm.

Jury question. Here, the court noted that there was disputed evidence that the teacher used gendered pronouns with other students, misgendered a transgender student, and avoided transgender students. Based on this factual dispute, said the court, whether the last-name-only accommodation and the teacher’s related actions were the cause of the students’ emotional distress was a question for the jury.

Addressing the dissent’s contention that the students’ distress and purported disruption were reported to the school’s administration and so long as an employer acts in good faith when making an employment decision, it is shielded from liability, the majority explained that defending against a religious accommodation claim requires an employer to prove more than just a lack of intentional discrimination. Rather, the court observed, “it is the employer’s burden to prove undue hardship arising from the accommodation, not to merely offer a good-faith—yet mistaken—reason for taking an adverse action.”

Objective standard. Further, the court stated, even if the students suffered subjective emotional injury, those injuries had to be objectively reasonable to rise to the level of undue hardship. “Given how many other Title VII claims require an objective showing,” said the court, “it follows that religious-accommodation cases require an employer to demonstrate an objective undue hardship on its business, not one just subjectively perceived.” Moreover, the court explained, “requiring that emotional harms be objectively reasonable is specific to situations where the employer asserts that those emotional impacts themselves are the only undue hardship on ‘the conduct of its particular business.’”

And here, the court, noting that the teacher expressly disputed that he avoided calling on transgender students and another teacher who worked in his classroom stated that she never heard any talk about why he had the accommodation, found insufficient evidence to conclude that calling students by their last names, without more, would inflict emotional harm on a reasonable person.

Disruption. The court also found it disputed as to whether the accommodation disrupted the learning environment. Two performing arts teachers spoke to the administration about students “having discussions about the uncomfortableness” in other classes but there no hint, the court explained, that those discussions interfered with students’ education or the teachers’ duties. And while three other teachers told the faculty advisor for the Equality Alliance Club that the accommodation was harming students, there was no evidence they elevated their concerns to the school’s administration.

Finally, the court, pointing to Groff’s holding that any hardship arising solely from “a coworker’s dislike of religious practice and expression in the workplace or the mere fact of an accommodation is not cognizable” under Title VII, noted that the complaints here were not based on hostility to the teacher’s religion. Rather, they all dealt with the effects on the two transgender students from his use of the last-name-only practice. “Yet even though the complaints stem from considerations not deemed ‘off the table’ by Groff, there is still a genuine material factual dispute about whether those complaints rose to an undue hardship on the school’s educational mission,” said the court.

Title IX liability. Even if the last-name accommodation did not unduly burden its mission, the school argued, it exposed it to an unreasonable risk of Title IX liability. Distinguishing cases cited by the school in support, the court found it was unable to conclude that the teacher, just by adhering to the last-name-only practice, “treated [transgender students] worse” than their classmates or subjected them to “increased stigmatization.” And without those showings, the court reasoned, “our circuit’s precedent that [the district] offers is materially different. The accommodation thus did not ‘place’ the school ‘on the razor’s edge of legal liability.’”

Religious sincerity. As to the district court’s denial of summary judgment to the teacher over the sincerity of his religious beliefs, he argued that the court erred by putting too much weight on the single instance at the awards ceremony where he called transgender students by their database names. Noting that Title VII does not require perfect consistency in observance or practice when deciding whether a person’s belief is sincere, the court pointed to the teacher’s opposition to the policy when it was formulated and then when it was adopted, his request for the last-name only accommodation, and his resignation when faced with the ultimatum to comply or be fired.

Regarding his use of the students’ database names at the awards ceremony, he claimed that was a “good faith effort” to work with the school as part of his accommodation as using last names at “such a formal event” would have been “unreasonable and conspicuous.” Finding a genuine fact issue regarding his sincerity, the court affirmed the denial of his summary judgment motion on this question.

Retaliation. Finally, declining to consider the teacher’s retaliation claim, the court explained that during supplemental briefing in the previous appeal, he stated that Groff did not speak to that claim, which qualified as a waiver of the issue.

Dissent. In a lengthy dissent, Judge Rovner asserted that from the start, the last-names only accommodation was fraught with problems. While neutral in the abstract, she contended, students quickly figured out that the practice was occasioned by the presence of transgender students in the teacher’s classroom and as a result, “transgender students felt stigmatized, their allies were frustrated and concerned, other teachers repeatedly fielded questions and concerns about the policy, and parents believed that both their decision-making and their children were not being respected.” These complaints, Rovner asserted, were conveyed to the school, which concluded that the accommodation was a failure and allowing it to continue presented the risk of legal liability.

“In remanding the case for a trial at which the jury will be invited to reassess de novo the evidence that confronted [the school] and to decide for itself how credible the concerns reported to [it] were, the court,” Rovner argued, “is setting a perilous precedent for employers. Until today, when confronted with a Title VII employment discrimination claim, we have deferred to an employer’s good-faith assessment of how an employee performed in the workplace. Without exception, we have always said that an employer’s honest, non-discriminatory assessment of its worker’s performance will carry the day, even if it strikes us as wrong-headed. Today the court invites a jury to do what we have always said a federal court will not do, which is to sit as a super-personnel department and second-guess the employer’s good-faith reasoning.”

Asserting further that the majority’s decision “also burdens employers in a second important respect,” Rovner contended that “many employers will be surprised to learn that their ability to define their own missions is restricted to formal policies prepared long before an employment dispute arrives in court.” Further, she observed, employers “may also be surprised to learn that when an employee’s religious accommodation has reportedly caused emotional distress or psychological injuries to one or more coworkers or customers, the employer cannot be confident that its undisputed, good-faith understanding of that harm will be given any deference; rather, it may be left to jurors to judge for themselves whether the injuries are objectively serious enough to be recognized in the Groff analysis.”

The case is No. 24-1942.

Judge: Brennan, M.

Attorneys: Rory Thomas Gray (Alliance Defending Freedom) for John M. Kluge. Brent R. Borg (Church Church Hittle & Antrim) for Brownsburg Community School Corp.

Companies: Brownsburg Community School Corp.

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