Judge Gives Green Light to Florida High School Gay-Straight Alliance
RSSBy Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 03/11/2009
Students at Yulee High School and Yulee Middle School in Florida can form a Gay-Straight Alliance, despite the fact that their school board denied permission to start a club that promotes gay tolerance, a U.S. district judge ruled yesterday.
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Plaintiff Hannah Page, a high School student, said classmates threatened to beat her up based on her sexual orientation. |
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of openly gay Yulee High School students, Hannah Page and Jacob Brock, who said that classmates have threatened to beat them up based on their sexual orientation, and both are routinely called derogatory names at school.
“We just want the club so that straight and gay kids can get together to talk about harassment and discrimination against gay kids in an open environment,” says Page. “The school is discriminating against us, and that’s exactly the kind of thing we want to talk about and prevent. Other clubs and groups are allowed to meet on campus, and we have that right too.”
Nassau County School Superintendent John Ruis said in a letter that “A club name highlighting specific sexual orientations will not be permitted as it would violate school board policy” and that even if the group changed its name to one without a gay-specific mission, approval was still uncertain.
But Robert Rosenwald, ACLU of Florida LGBT Advocacy Director and lead counsel for the students, said the district officially recognized other student organizations, such as the Fellowship of Christian Athletes—which is openly anti-gay and pledges to keep homosexuals out. That club meets regularly at Yulee high school and middle school.
GSAs are made up of straight and gay students who advocate for an end to bullying, harassment, and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) teens. There are more than 4,400 GSAs in the U.S., with more than 80 in Florida alone, according to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a national organization devoted to ensuring that students are respected regardless of sexual orientation.
Bullying of LGBT students in Nassau County Schools—located in an extremely conservative rural town 50
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Robert Rosenwald, lead counsel for the students and ACLU of Florida LGBT Advocacy Director. |
“This is a victory for our clients, for the Yulee High GSA, and indeed for gay and straight kids all across America,” says Rosenwald. “Time and time again, we’ve seen discrimination and intolerance struck down by the courts in these cases, and for every school that wishes to cross the line, we’ll be here to defend the students.”
The judge made the ruling citing an earlier ACLU of Florida case, Gonzalez v. Sch. Bd. Of Okeechobee Co., where the court rejected the school board’s argument that such a club would interfere with “discipline in the operation of the school,” noting that the “Defendant’s position is not well founded and Plaintiffs have established a substantial likelihood of success on the merits.”
The order prohibits the school district from refusing to recognize GSAs, as long as other student organizations receive official recognition. In addition to allowing the club to meet on campus, the judge’s order prohibits the school from forcing the club to change its name, as the principal had previously demanded in order to gain club recognition. The order also prohibits the school from interfering with the club’s goals of advocating “for tolerance, respect and equality of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people,” and forbids any retaliation by the school.
It’s still unclear whether school officials plans to appeal the decision.
“Gay and straight students deserve a learning atmosphere that promotes tolerance,” Rosenwald adds. “That is exactly what these students are promoting, and it’s a lesson that we hope the school officials will learn from them.”
The ACLU sued the Nassau County Schools on February 10.
