An Indiana public school music teacher who claims he was essentially forced out of his job because he wouldn’t violate his Christian beliefs and call transgender students by their new names has won a $650,000 payout from the school district that forced him to choose between his religious convictions and his job.
On March 3, constitutional rights legal advocacy organization, the Alliance Defending Freedom, announced the settlement on behalf of their client, former Brownsburg High School instructor John Kluge.
In a prepared statement released announcing the settlement, ADF Senior Counsel and vice president of U.S. Litigation David Cortman said: “This settlement confirms what the law has always said: Public schools cannot force teachers to violate their religious beliefs.
“Title VII requires employers to accommodate their employees’ religious beliefs and practices. When they fail to do so — or worse, announce that they will grant no religious accommodations, as Brownsburg did — they can be held accountable.”
The settlement came about seven months since the Chicago-based U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled an Indianapolis federal judge had wrongly tossed Kluge’s lawsuit and returned the case to federal district court for further proceedings, potentially including a jury trial.
However, the school district apparently opted instead to settle and pay Kluge, rather than risk a worse outcome at trial.
The parties filed a stipulation of dismissal in Indianapolis federal court on March 3.
The case landed in that court in 2019, when Kluge, supported by the ADF, filed suit against the Brownsburg Community School Corporation, the K-12 public school district that included Brownsburg High School.
Brownsburg is a suburb of Indianapolis, about 15 miles northwest of the city center.
Kluge had worked as the only music and orchestra teacher at Brownsburg High School, beginning in 2014.
However, he came under scrutiny from school district officials, including Brownsburg High School Principal Bret Draghe and district superintendent Jim Snapp, during the 2017-2018 school year.
In that school year, the Brownsburg district, ostensibly out of concern for the “significant challenges” faced at the high school by a growing number of transgender students, instituted new policies. Among these, the district required teachers to call all students by the first names and preferred pronouns listed in their official student database, known as PowerSchool.
Kluge, however, said he believed his Christian faith prevented him from using first names conflicting with a student’s biological sex.
As an accommodation, he asked to use students’ last names “like a sports coach,” rather than the first names appearing in a school database.
After one year, students, teachers and parents complained, after which the school rescinded the accommodation. Given the choice of calling students by their first name or being fired, Kluge resigned before the 2018-2019 school year and filed a Title VII discrimination lawsuit.
Kluge initially lost in both federal district court and before the Seventh Circuit on appeal in 2023.
However, his case was granted new life that same year, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided a case known as Groff v DeJoy. That decision served to increase the burden for employers to prove hardships that come with denying a religious accommodation.
U.S. District Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, ruled the new Supreme Court decision didn’t shift her view on the case and again ruled against Kluge.
Magnus-Stinson has since retired from the bench, and the case was reassigned to U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker.
At the Seventh Circuit, however, Kluge’s case was revived, as the same appeals panel that had earlier ruled 2-1 against him now reversed that ruling, saying for the first time the school district couldn’t sidestep Kluge’s religious discrimination claims.
In the new 2-1 ruling, the majority said the Groff v DeJoy precedent required the Brownsburg school district to do more than just assert Kluge’s religious convictions and related actions offended some students and disrupted the academic workplace.
“The record does not conclusively show that any student’s safety was in jeopardy,” wrote Seventh Circuit Judge Michael Brennan in the majority opinion, filed in August 2025. “There were no allegations of threatened physical harm or verbal abuse. The only evidence from students centers on their discomfort. Specifically, that the accommodation made them feel ‘alienated, upset and dehumanized,’ and ‘made the classroom environment very awkward.’ ”
The majority said the level of alleged “harm” and “emotional distress” and whether Kluge’s “last name only” accommodation caused enough of it to justify his punishment and forced resignation are questions that should go to a jury.
A dissenting judge, Ilana D. Rovner, asserted the case would now set a “dangerous” new precedent, opening employers to new lawsuits over their alleged failure to accommodate workers’ religious beliefs. She found, like Judge Magnus-Stinson, that the Groff ruling doesn’t actually require the school district to do more than it did to allegedly attempt to accommodate Kluge’s religious beliefs.
Rovner said the courts should still defer to the school district’s determination on whether Kluge should follow the school’s policies on student gender identity or lose his job.
Ultimately, however, the district opted to settle the case.
“We hope this settlement shows teachers that they do not have to bow the knee to ideological mandates that violate their religious beliefs,” said Cortman. “And schools should learn that refusing to accommodate religious employees can be illegal and expensive.”
