News
2006-07-15
GSA must be
allowed to meet at Georgia high school
White County High
School in northeast Georgia must allow students in the
local gay-straight alliance club to meet on campus, a
White County High
School in northeast Georgia must allow students in the
local gay-straight alliance club to meet on campus, a
federal judge ruled on Friday. "This is a great
victory for the lesbian and gay students and their
friends at White County High School who will finally be
allowed to meet and can begin to address the violence
and harassment against gay students at the school,"
said Beth Littrell, associate legal director of the
American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, which brought the
case on behalf of the students in the club. "But it's
also a victory for all students who have been shut out
of noncurricular school clubs and activities all year
by the school's wrongheaded attempts to prevent the
GSA."
After reluctantly
allowing students at White County High School to form a
GSA, the school district took the extraordinary step of
purporting to shut down all noncurricular clubs in an
effort to prevent the GSA from meeting. The ACLU
brought a lawsuit against the school district in
February, claiming that the school officials violated the
students' rights under the federal Equal Access Act,
which requires schools to provide equal treatment to
all noncurricular clubs. At a trial in the case the
ACLU proved that the school did not shut down all
noncurricular clubs but continued to allow several
noncurricular clubs to meet.
"This has been
the best civics lesson ever," said Kerry Pacer, one of
the founders of the GSA, called PRIDE, and The
Advocate's Person of the Year for 2005. "I
couldn't believe the school was so unfair to us when all we
wanted to do was to try to address the violence and
harassment against gay students. I'm relieved that the
court is going to make the school let us meet."
Federal courts
have repeatedly ruled in favor of GSAs where schools tried
to block their formation, upholding students' right to form
the groups in Salt Lake City; Orange County, Calif.;
Franklin Township, Ind.; Boyd County, Ky.; and Osseo,
Minn. (The Advocate)
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