Evading the Law at Okeechobee High School

It's unfortunate that school officials, who are supposed to be teaching good citizenship, have decided to model bad citizenship for the students at Okeechobee High School.  Even though a U.S. District Judge ruled in favor of the claims of students who wanted to form a Gay-Straight Alliance at Okeechobee High School in several pre-trial rulings, the school hung tough, waiting for the "instigators" to graduate, and on April 9 their tactics paid off as Judge K. Michael Moore dismissed the case for lack of a viable plaintiff with a viable legal claim.

The students, represented by the ACLU LGBT Rights Project, filed suit in November 2006, alleging that the school violated their rights by refusing to let the students have an on-campus GSA on the same basis as other student clubs.  A federal statute, the Equal Access Act, requires that any school district that allows non-curricular clubs on campus may not discriminate among such clubs.  Schools intent on evading this requirement in order to avoid allowing a gay-straight alliance to function on their campus usually pretend that they don't have non-curricular clubs, but federal district judges have regularly seen through these ruses and found little if any curricular connection for many of the student clubs that these evasive districts allow to operate.

Judge Moore issued several pre-trial rulings in the case:  Gay-Straight Alliance of Okeechobee High School v. School Board, 477 F. Supp. 2d 1246 (S.D.Fla., March 13, 2007) (holding that the students could sue as an association and had adequately pled a 42 USC sec. 1983 civil rights claim against the school district), 483 F. Supp. 2d 1224 (S.D.Fla., April 6, 2007) (granting preliminary injunction requiring that GSA be allowed to meet at the school pending the outcome of the case); 242 F.R.D. 644 (S.D.Fla., April 25, 2007) (granting protective order concerning identity of GSA members).  However, as the case was drawn out, with no trial scheduled to occur until sometime this spring, and with student organizers graduating or drifting away, the school board won an order dismissing the GSA as a named plaintiff when Yasmin Gonzalez, one of the students, was the last remaining plaintiff, and as a graduate of the school, her standing to seek permanent injunctive relief was challenged by the defendants. 

On April 8, Judge Moore granted a motion to add Jessica Donaldson, another former student who had been a member of the GSA when the suit was filed, as a named plaintiff, but denied a motion to add Brittany Martin, a current student at Okeechobee High School who wished to participate in a GSA, pointing out that "no allegations have been made that Martin has attempted to gain recognition for the GSA as a student organization at OHS or that she has suffered any injury as a result of such efforts," so Moore concluded that Martin did not meet standing requirements to join the existing law suit.

Furthermore, on April 9, Moore issued another opinion, this time granting the defendant's motion to dismiss the case entirely.  Since the only remaining plaintiffs, Gonzalez and Davidson, were no longer students and thus no longer had standing to seek injunctive relief, the case boiled down to their potential damage action.   The only claim at this point was for nominal damages, and Moore opined that nominal damages would be available only for violations of due process of law, not for past violations of the Equal Access Act.  In the absence of such a claim, Moore found the plaintiffs' claims to be moot, and concluded that the court lacked subject matter jurisdiction and should dismiss the case.

All in all, this is pretty outrageous.  A bunch of high school students who had a clear statutory right to form their organization have been stymied by a school board that, despite the court's clear rulings and issuance of a preliminary injunction, determined to fight it out until the student plaintiffs had graduated, and then to get the case dismissed on mootness grounds, trusting that their intransigence would discourage new students from attempting to join the embattled organization.  Here is a civics lesson, indeed.

According to an article in the Palm Beach Post on April 11, the students' ACLU attorney, Rob Rosenwald, indicated that at this point there are four students at the school who want to have a GSA and, despite the court ruling on the preliminary injunction last year (and the growing list stretching back several years of rulings by federal judges under the Equal Access Act requiring school boards to drop their opposition and allow GSAs to function at their high schools), the principal recently told Brittany Martin that the GSA group could not meet on campus.  Back to square one.   Rosenwald may file a motion with the court to revive the case, or, alternatively, initiate a new case on behalf of Martin and the other potential GSA members.  Perhaps this time, however, if a new suit is filed, it can be handled more expeditiously in light of the previous judicial findings that the GSA and the student plaintiffs were likely to prevail on the merits.  Rights in a statute are not worth much unless they are enforceable, after all....