Victory: Teacher's Job Saved After Facing Religious Persecution
When veteran Arlington County teacher, TeRay Bingham, was about to be fired because of his faith, our Founding Freedoms Law Center (FFLC) attorneys quickly sprang into action to defend him, and now he is keeping his job. But just wait until you hear how crazy this story is.
Photo: Arlington County Public School teacher, TeRay Bingham, wearing a Christian-themed rainbow shirt.
After teaching at Arlington Public Schools (APS) for the past 14 years, Mr. Bingham was abruptly placed on administrative leave, with a recommendation that he be terminated. Ostensibly, this was triggered because he sent out a personal survey to some of his APS colleagues asking if they were experiencing the kind of targeting and harassment he had been receiving from his school officials. But in reality, Mr. Bingham believes he was being punished as retaliation, including for his willingness to be open about his Christian faith, which came into conflict with APS’s radical LGBTQ+ agenda. (Currently, APS is one of five VA school districts under formal investigation by the U.S. Department of Education because of their “transgender” policies.)
Last school year, when most of the other teachers wore rainbow LGBTQ-pride-themed apparel (some of which was created and sold by APS itself), Mr. Bingham was sent home from work for wearing a t-shirt with a rainbow that had a Biblical theme (after all, God did specifically create the rainbow as a covenant sign to all mankind). He filed a formal complaint against APS for religious discrimination, but the cost of paying a lawyer prevented him from taking action then. (He didn’t yet know about FFLC.) On another occasion, when Mr. Bingham was instructed to treat a female student as though she were a cat - yes, you read that right - and to call her by a male name and pronouns (all without her parents’ knowledge), he refused, causing more controversy. He had also recently been a whistleblower against APS after several students experienced drug overdoses, with at least one dying, in the high school bathrooms that were not being adequately monitored.
Things then became worse. At the beginning of the current 2024-25 school year, without any warning or explanation, Mr. Bingham’s administration moved him into an entirely different department, which was commonly called the “lesbian department,” presumably knowing it would lead to more direct conflict for him. You can see where this goes. Mr. Bingham then began being pestered by his administration over every minuscule thing, as if they were doing everything they could to “pad the file” against him to get rid of him. Just weeks later, after sending a survey to his colleagues about whether they were being similarly treated, he was placed on administrative leave with a recommendation that he be fired.
Believe it or not, the details and subsequent events of his story get even crazier, but there is a clear overarching theme: As a committed Christian who has refused to hide his faith in the workplace and to bow the knee to a radical anti-Christian agenda, Mr. Bingham became a big problem for his public school employer – a problem they had to eliminate. Thankfully, he reached out to our Law Center, and we were able to intervene in time to save his job and defend his good name.
Mr. Bingham is just the latest Virginia public school teacher to be targeted fundamentally because of how his Christian faith makes him stand out in an ultra-woke school district. But thankfully, FFLC has successfully helped many others like him across Virginia, and we stand ready to do so in the future. As always, we appreciate your continued prayers and support to make all of this possible.