Vermont School Agrees to Pay Settlement to Snowboard Coach Fired for Saying Boys Have Athletic Advantage

Vermont school officials have agreed to pay a former high school snowboard coach $75,000 in damages after he was fired last year for briefly talking with two of his team members about the advantage that biological males tend to have in sports.

The state education department and the school district, the Mountain Views Supervisory Unit, are also acknowledging that former snowboard coach David Bloch did not violate a state-mandated policy prohibiting harassment, hazing, and bullying, according to Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative law firm supporting Bloch.

Tyson Langhofer, an ADF lawyer, told National Review that the settlement, along with the acknowledgement by the defendants that Bloch hadn’t violated the harassment policy, “obviously validates our position that Dave was wrongfully fired and that no teacher should ever lose their job for speaking the truth.”

National Review first reported on Bloch’s firing in September.

Sherry Sousa, the school district superintendent who fired Bloch last February, did not respond to an email from National Review on Tuesday. “We are confident that the District acted properly,” Sousa wrote in an email last year.

Bloch, who works in real estate, founded Woodstock Union High School’s snowboard team in 2011 after some parents asked him to, but also because of his love of the sport. He continued coaching even after he no longer had a child competing on the team.

On February 8, 2023, a debate over transgender sports participation flared between two members of Bloch’s team. At the time, they were preparing to compete against a team with a transgender athlete who competes against girls.

In Bloch’s account, a male team member was arguing that allowing biological boys to compete against girls wasn’t fair. A female team member accused her teammate of being transphobic.

Bloch previously told National Review that he briefly joined the “cloudy conversation” to provide an “umbrella” and to ensure both students felt “heard.”

He agreed with the female snowboarder that there is a “spectrum” of gender expression — more feminine males and more masculine females. But the male snowboarder also had a point: biological males have physical characteristics that tend to give them advantages in sports.

Bloch said he had a “middle-of-the-line position” on the issue, and that they never specifically addressed the transgender snowboarder on the other team.

The conversation lasted less than three minutes, according to a lawsuit.

The next day, Bloch was fired from the coaching job because, district leaders said, his conversation with his two team members violated anti-harassment and anti-bullying policies. Block and ADF sued over the summer, alleging that the school district and the superintendent violated his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

Langhofer said Bloch was happy with the settlement, which ADF announced on Tuesday. Though the settlement doesn’t include Bloch being reinstated as snowboard coach, there is nothing in it that would bar him from participating with the team again, Langhofer said.

The $75,000 Bloch will receive is almost 17 times his annual coach’s salary, though Langhofer said that Bloch “didn’t sue for the money.”

Langhofer said Bloch sued to stand up for teachers and coaches “and to show that public schools can’t fire employees for respectful speech on a matter of public concern.”

“Males and females are different,” he said, “and stating that fact shouldn’t have gotten coach Bloch fired.”