Students go by many names. Someone named Andrew might prefer to be called Andy, or perhaps even Drew. So what? What if Andy was chosen because the student was transgender and the person who was once known as Andrew was now Andrea?

As Prawf Jon Adler explains, the Sixth Circuit held in Meriwether v. Hartop that forcing college professors to use preferred pronouns violated their First Amendment rights of free expression and free exercise. But that was pronouns. In Kluge v. Brownsburg Community School Corp, the issue was whether a teacher could be required to use the student’s chosen name as reflected in the high school’s database under Title VII.

Brownsburg High School instituted a policy mandating teachers call students by their first names as they appeared in its database. For transgender students who had changed their first names, the database listed their new ones.

John Kluge was a teacher at Brownsburg. He repeatedly objected to the school’s name policy on religious grounds. Kluge believed that calling transgender students names that conflicted with their biological sex encouraged their transgender identities—a sin, in his view. So, he requested an accommodation, which the school granted. Kluge was allowed to call students by only their last names—”like a sports coach,” he said.

After one year, a handful of students and teachers, as well as one student’s parents, complained to Brownsburg about Kluge’s practice. The school rescinded the accommodation, giving Kluge the chance to either call all students by their first names or face termination. Confronted with this choice, he resigned. Kluge then sued the school under Title VII for failing to accommodate his religion.

Giving rise to a twist in the fact pattern is that the school initially made an accommodation for Kluge’s claim that using names that didn’t sync with students’ sex violated his religious beliefs. By calling students by their last names, the gender implication of their first names was avoided. At the same time, by calling students by their last names while other teachers used their first names, it was impossible to ignore the fact that it was done to circumvent their gender identity.

The circuit held that an issue of fact was raised, allowing the case to proceed.

An employer is required to accommodate an employee’s religious practices unless doing so would impose an “undue hardship” on its business. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(j). At issue is whether the impacts caused by Brownsburg’s accommodation of Kluge rise to the level of an undue hardship under Groff v. DeJoy, 600 U.S. 447 (2023). Because material factual disputes exist, we reverse the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the school on Kluge’s accommodation claim and remand for further proceedings.

Other teachers, students and parents took issue with the accommodation given Kluge. which they claimed made them “uncomfortable” and caused “tension.” Kluge denied that any tension existed, and the court held that “uncomfortable” was not the line beyond which accommodations were not permitted.

Brownsburg has not carried its burden to show undisputed facts of a serious disruption to the learning environment. Although two performing arts teachers, whose testimony is not in the record, had spoken to the administration about students “having discussions about the uncomfortableness” in other classes, there is no hint that those discussions interfered with students’ education or the teachers’ duties. These two teachers also claimed that the accommodation caused “tension” that interfered with “the overall functioning of the performing arts department.” But Kluge expressly disputed that “tension” existed within the department. He instead said that he “g[o]t along great” with those same performing arts faculty who purportedly complained, and he “did not witness any … animosity” from them.

Was Kluge’s calling students by their last name sufficient to cause serious disruption such that it impaired the students ability to learn? It seems highly unlikely. While it most assuredly reflected Kluge’s refusal to play by the woke naming rules, it did not prevent Kluge from teaching or students from learning. Indeed, a teacher might choose to call students by their last name for reasons having nothing to do with gender identity, even if it was understood at Brownsburg that Kluge did so for the express purpose of not using preferred gendered names.

But had the district not agreed to an accommodation in the first place, and had the fact pattern presented itself in reverse, was calling a student by the preferred name a legitimate impairment of free expression? It’s a name, not a pronoun. In the normal course of affairs, using a name by which the student chooses to go reflects nothing about the person using the name. If dad wants to name his son Sue, is that not his prerogative? If Andrea wants to go by Andy, just like the student sitting next to her originally named Andrew, does that have any deeper meaning than that’s what the kid wants to be called?

With pronouns, a separate issue was raised. Whether it was gendered pronouns or silly, made-up pronouns, these are words used by others about the targeted person. For someone to demand that others use their language regime outside their presence is to control their free expression. For someone using the chosen language regime, it can fairly be argued that it legitimized their choice and, by doing so, implicates the user as supporting their belief system.

But not with a name. Just as reason should be applied to the outer reaches of demands placed on others, so too should reason control the claims that using a student’s chosen name would someone violate one’s religious beliefs. If a boy wants to be called Sue, so what? Calling a student by a chosen name implicates nothing beyond courtesy and reasonableness.