FFS Friday: Vivian Geraghty

January 10, 2025

FFS (Female Free Speech) Friday honors women and girls who are speaking out about the harms that “gender identity” poses to women and girls as a sex class. FFS Friday posts are free and shareable. If you would like access to content that delves deeper into the movement to protect the sex-based rights of women and girls and to stop the abolition of sex, please consider a paid subscription.

Today’s FFS Friday honors Vivian Geraghty, who recently settled with the Jackson Local School District in Ohio in a lawsuit claiming she was unconstitutionally forced to resign after she refused to use two students’ “preferred names and pronouns.” A court ruled that she was right and the district has agreed to pay her $450,000 in damages. Her story even made the Telegraph in the UK!

Vivian Geraghty was a language arts teacher at Jackson Memorial Middle School, in Massillon, Ohio.

According to the complaint, in August 2022, two of her students asked her to address them using their “preferred names and pronouns,” consistent with their “gender identities,” instead of their real names and sex-based pronouns. Via an email message, a school counselor instructed all of the students’ teachers, including Geraghty, to do so.

A few days later, Geraghty explained to school administrators that she could not, based on her understanding of science and her religious views, refer to children using opposite-sex pronouns. She explained that doing so is dishonest and harmful to children who are confused about their sex. She said that she could not lie or harm children. They told her that she was engaging in “insubordination” and that if she refused to comply, she would have to resign, effective immediately. They then handed her a laptop and ordered her to draft her letter of resignation in the adjoining room. Believing she had no other choice, she did so. This all happened within two hours.

She then sued, alleging that the district and administrators subjected her to free speech retaliation and compelled speech in violation of the First Amendment, and violated her right to the free exercise of religion, also in violation of the First Amendment. She also alleged that they violated her due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.

As the complaint makes clear:

Ms. Geraghty … understands, based on scientific evidence, that consistent with all sexually reproductive species, human sex is defined with reference to gamete production and that there are only two sexes, which are male and female.

Because a person is male or female based on sex, not personal identity, Ms. Geraghty believes that addressing a male student as “she” and addressing a female as “he” is dishonest.

In August of 2024, the District Court for the Northern District of Ohio issued an order agreeing with her on almost all of her claims (the court rejected the Due Process claim but agreed on both First Amendment claims).

Finally, in December, the parties settled and the district agreed to pay her $450,000 in damages.

Geraghty’s case demonstrates that when we fight, we can win. No one should have to use speech, including opposite-sex pronouns, with which we disagree. Vivian, if you are reading this, today’s FFS Friday is for you.