Mid Vermont Christian School has filed an appeal to a federal court in New York City after a Senior U.S. District Court Judge in Vermont rejected a request for a preliminary injunction to allow its students the same educational benefits as public school students.
Mid Vermont filed a two-part civil lawsuit, which included religious discrimination by the Vermont Principals’ Association forcing the school to play against a team with a transgender student in the state girls basketball tournament in 2023. Mid Vermont Christian recently agreed to accept an out-of-court payment of $566,000 on behalf of Jay Nichols, executive director of the VPA, to partially settle the religious discrimination civil lawsuit.
The second part challenges the constitutionality of a section of Act 73 the Vermont Education statute passed in 2025 that imposes broad changes on many aspects of public education in the state. The law includes a substantial reduction in tuition payments to independent high schools by school districts that do not operate high schools of their own.
Vermont has long provided for the education of these students by requiring the so-called “sending towns” to pay a base amount established by the Agency of Education to public and independent schools that receive the students, Senior Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford noted.
He said Mid Vermont Christian is among the independent schools that no longer qualify for these town tuition payments. Mid Vermont maintains its exclusion from these payments is the result of religious discrimination in violation of the First Amendment. It also claims it is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.
The Quechee school attempted to get a preliminary injunction restoring its eligibility to receive town tuition payments.
Crawford in a 34 page order rejected the preliminary injunction request.
The school has since filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York City, which had acted favorably toward MVCS in the other half of the lawsuit.
For more on this, please see our June 25 edition of the Vermont Standard.
