Supporting LGBTQ students

by Len Rieser on Mar 16 2009 Posted in Education law corner

Photo: http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6643654.html

Hannah Page, plaintiff in the Florida case.

As long as we’re Imagining, let’s think about schools in which it’s safe to be lesbian or gay. A federal court did just that last week in Gay-Straight Alliance of Yulee High School v. School Board of Nassau County, holding that two high school students must be allowed to set up a Gay-Straight Alliance at their north Florida high school.

According to the students’ complaint, school officials had vetoed the name “Gay-Straight Alliance,” arguing that a phrase “highlighting specific sexual orientations” would violate school board policy and would be “disruptive.” The school said that, if the students would agree to a name that would not “communicate [the club’s] gay-specific mission,” the matter could be reconsidered – though the school did not promise to allow the club even under those circumstances.

The dangerous-name argument reminded the judge of a California case in which the school had demanded that the Gay-Straight Alliance rename itself the “Tolerance Club,” “Acceptance Club,” or merely the “Alliance.” That district lost too, the court noting that no other clubs had been forced to change their names, and that the right to select one’s name is protected by the First Amendment. 

In the Florida case, the judge based his decision on the Equal Access Act. That law says that if a school allows some clubs, it can’t discriminate against others on the basis of the “religious, philosophical, or other content of the speech” at meetings, so long as order can be maintained. Although the law was originally promoted by organizations seeking to protect after-school prayer clubs, the language has -- perhaps unexpectedly to some -- opened the door for even-handedness towards gay-straight alliances as well. 

I’ve mentioned in other contexts that laws are often ineffective in supporting students’ rights to a quality education, but this area is, to me, a refreshing exception. Although the GSA cases involve “only” extracurricular programs, issues of sexual orientation are very much on the minds of middle- and high-school students – and not just after school hours. So learning is served when schools are required to accommodate a club that, in the words of plaintiff Hannah Page, enables students (and teachers) to “get together to talk about harassment and discrimination against gay kids in an open environment” – without having to refer to themselves as the Euphemism Club. In fact, it’s a development that may even be as important, in the long run, as getting those test scores up another notch.