Eight years after Indiana orchestra teacher John Kluge accused his school of firing him for refusing to affirm trans students’ identities, the school district has agreed to pay him $650,000 in a settlement. The settlement also requires the district to train staff in federal religious discrimination protections for employees.

Kluge sued the Brownsburg Community School Corporation after claiming he was forced to resign in 2018 because he didn’t want to follow Brownsburg High School’s policy on transgender students. The policy said that trans students who submit written consent from a doctor and a parent must be referred to with their correct names and pronouns. Kluge said that, as a Christian, he had to call those students by the names they were given at birth.

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Kluge has been represented by the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). The group’s senior counsel, David Cortman, celebrated the conclusion of the years-long dispute in a statement, saying that ADF hopes “this settlement shows teachers that they do not have to bow the knee to ideological mandates that violate their religious beliefs. And schools should learn that refusing to accommodate religious employees can be illegal and expensive.”

Cortman also declared that “common sense has prevailed at Brownsburg.”

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When Kluge first filed the lawsuit, he argued he was “being compelled to encourage students in what I believe is something that’s a dangerous lifestyle.”

“I’m fine to teach students with other beliefs,” he said, “but the fact that teachers are being compelled to speak a certain way is the scary thing.”

Kluge said that he had an agreement with administrators to refer to all students by their last names and avoid pronouns entirely. He was supposed to say that he was trying to sound like a sports coach if anyone asked why he was using last names.

It turned out he couldn’t maintain that level of artifice in his speech and used first names anyway when he was talking to cisgender students. Trans students noticed that he avoided talking to them altogether.

According to one filing in the case, a trans student said Kluge’s behavior made him “feel alienated, upset, and dehumanized. It made me dread going to orchestra class each day.”

The principal met with Kluge and said that his behavior was “creating tension in the students and faculty.” He resigned but later changed his mind and sued the school district in 2019, claiming that his religious freedom was violated.

In 2021, a federal judge in Indianapolis ruled against him. Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson said that when he’s in the classroom, he is no longer just a private citizen but a representative of his employer.

Kluge argued that he needed a reasonable accommodation to do his job, like how other employers might be required to adjust uniform rules for Jewish or Sikh employees. But for an accommodation to be reasonable, he would have to be able to perform his job duties adequately.

And Magnus-Stinson wasn’t convinced that the accommodation he requested – referring to students by their last names – was reasonable. She cited testimony from two trans students, Aidyn and Sam, who said Kluge’s behavior “made them feel targeted and uncomfortable.”

“Aidyn dreaded going to orchestra class and did not feel comfortable speaking to Mr. Kluge directly,” Magnus-Stinson wrote in her decision. “Other students and teachers complained that Mr. Kluge’s behavior was insulting or offensive and made his classroom environment unwelcoming and uncomfortable. Aidyn quit orchestra entirely.”

Kluge then lost his appeal when Circuit Court Judge Ilana Rovner wrote that his “last-names-only practice stigmatized the transgender students and caused them demonstrable emotional harm.”

ADF told the Indy Star that Kluge no longer teaches in public schools.

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