Indiana music teacher returns to 7th Circuit seeking protection of religious beliefs

CHICAGO – Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing former Indiana high school music teacher John Kluge filed an opening brief Wednesday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit after a lower court ruled against him.

After the Brownsburg Community School Corporation terminated Kluge’s employment because of his sincerely held religious beliefs, he appealed to the 7th Circuit in July 2022 after the lower court initially ruled against him. A year later, the appeals court sent the case back to the district court in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Groff v. DeJoy; however, the district court once again denied Kluge’s request to protect his religious freedom.

“Government employees should know they have the freedom to live and work according to their religious beliefs,” said ADF Senior Counsel and Vice President of U.S. Litigation David Cortman. “Yet the Brownsburg school district ignored this right, deciding instead that Mr. Kluge’s religious views couldn’t be tolerated. It revoked his religious accommodation based on the grumblings of a few, forcing him to resign or be fired. The school district’s actions violate Title VII, a federal law prohibiting discrimination against employees on the basis of religion. As the Supreme Court affirmed in Groff, employers must accommodate employees’ religious practices unless doing so imposes undue hardships on their overall operations. We are urging the 7th Circuit to uphold Mr. Kluge’s right to religious accommodation under Title VII.”

Kluge taught at Brownsburg High School for four years. In 2017, the school district mandated that teachers refer to transgender-identifying students using pronouns and names inconsistent with their sex. Kluge requested a religious accommodation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to call all his students by their last names—like a coach—instead of referring to female students with male names and pronouns and vice versa. The school district granted Kluge this accommodation, and he successfully continued teaching under it for an entire school year. But in response to the grumblings of a few students and teachers, the district revoked the accommodation and forced Kluge to resign, ending his teaching career.

“Under Groff, Brownsburg cannot show that accommodating Mr. Kluge’s religious beliefs caused undue hardship in the overall context of its business,” the opening brief in Kluge v. Brownsburg Community School Corporation explains. “Third-party grumblings—from a miniscule fraction of its constituents—don’t show ‘undue hardship’ in accommodating him or justify Brownsburg excluding accommodations and forcing him to resign. Thus, the Court should reverse the district court and remand for the entry of judgment in Mr. Kluge’s favor on the discrimination and retaliation claims.”

Michael Cork, one of nearly 5,000 attorneys in the ADF Attorney Network, is serving as local counsel on behalf of Kluge.

The ADF Center for Academic Freedom is dedicated to protecting First Amendment and related freedoms for students and faculty so that everyone can freely participate in the marketplace of ideas without fear of government censorship.

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