A few days before school let out for the summer in 2022, high school P.E. teacher Jessica Tapia noticed some hateful comments and messages on her Instagram.
Tapia taught at Jurupa Valley High School (JVHS) in California, where she graduated in 2010. She had a stellar reputation in the Jurupa Unified School District (JUSD) as both a straight-A student in her younger years and as a teacher beloved by students and administration.
A mom of three, Tapia feels called to use social media to share her faith journey and encourage other moms. Growing up in a home with no father and an addicted mother, she had the wherewithal at age 7 to know something wasn’t right. She asked her grandmother if she and her sister could move in with her. Her grandma introduced her to Christ.
“She showed me who Christ was,” Tapia told Decision. “A few years into being with my grandma and just being immersed into the faith … I had a pretty good understanding of Jesus, what He had done for me, and the fact that I wanted to be born again.”
Social media was a natural outlet. “It was my starting place,” she said, “where I began speaking boldly in truth and sharing my personal views on things going on in the world.” Her personal Instagram account was not intended for her students and didn’t indicate that she was a teacher.
But when she saw the nasty comments and messages, she realized immediately that they were coming from students at JVHS. She deleted them as they came, but one student left a comment telling her it was “too late”—they had already reported her to JUSD.
The next day, Tapia was removed from her class and put on administrative leave. After this came a series of meetings in which she was intimidated, handed a packet of 12 allegations and given directives to follow. If she wanted to keep her job, she would call students by their preferred names and pronouns; she would not tell parents about their students’ gender transitions; and she would refrain from talking to students about God and the Bible.
“The Lord made it pretty clear to me: ‘You’re entering spiritual warfare. Stand firm,’” she said. “I was either going to crumble at their feet and do whatever and become whoever they wanted me to be to keep my job, or realize I have a huge decision on the line.”
To help her get the right perspective, she took three months of stress leave, starting in September 2022. “I needed to be patient and go through some steps to clearly see what God was calling me to do,” she said. She started writing out a resignation letter, but could never get around to finishing it. She would later come to believe that resigning was not what God had for her.
At the end of her leave, Tapia told JUSD she was ready to return to work, but she could not comply with the directives. They brought her in for a religious accommodation meeting. “I was questioned up and down, all about my Christian faith,” she said. During that meeting, she brought up that she would not let biological males use girls’ locker rooms, which was met with immediate pushback.
“I felt so alone in what I was being led to do, [but I] knew I needed to do it,” Tapia said on The Seth Gruber Show. She described being the youngest person in the room—and the only one willing to stand up for what was right.
About a week later, she received a termination letter saying that the district was unable to accommodate her religious beliefs.
Represented by Advocates for Faith and Freedom, Tapia filed a lawsuit against JUSD in May 2023. One year later, in May of this year, the parties agreed on a settlement of $360,000—triple the salary Tapia would have made the previous year had she not been terminated.
“The school district that Jessica worked for is a smaller district, so it’s a significant amount of money,” Julianne Fleischer, Tapia’s attorney, told Decision. “We truly believe that this settlement amount sends a strong message to other school districts that there is absolutely a price to pay when you discriminate against a teacher for their faith.”
For the last year, the school district has told Jessica’s attorneys that they let her go because they were afraid of lawsuits from transgender students, Fleischer said. And yet, Tapia’s First Amendment rights are equally valid.
“These school districts and employers look at the rights that are protected by the First Amendment as second-class to every other right,” Fleischer said.
Tapia wanted to encourage more teachers to stand up in a time when their Biblical beliefs are being trampled: “My prayer the whole time was, ‘Send a message.’”
Tapia, along with Advocates for Faith and Freedom, started Teachers Don’t Lie, an organization designed to give teachers a place to learn their constitutional rights and obtain legal help if they find themselves in a situation similar to Tapia’s.
“I just can’t encourage people enough to do what I did and put their faith into action and boldly stand in the truth,” Tapia said. “We don’t have to see what’s coming next, because He already sees it, and He’s not asking for us to have that part figured out.
“You literally cannot fathom the gain on the other side of living out your faith.” ©2024 BGEA
Photo: Courtesy of Jessica Tapia