Mt. Dora – The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is acquiring some strange bedfellows in their fight to allow a Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) at Carver Middle School.
In December 2013, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the Lake County School District on behalf of Hannah Faughnan, 12, a seventh-grader who is attempting to form a GSA at her school. The suit is fighting a policy written into the District’s club policy that forbids “non-curricular” clubs at middle schools. The District is relying on the policy to prevent Carver Middle School’s GSA from meeting.
Non-curricular is defined by the District as clubs “not directly related to the body of courses offered by the school.”
Now, it’s not just LGBT-friendly groups taking issue with the School District’s policies on school clubs. Orlando-based Liberty Counsel is suing the District on behalf of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA), which claims it’s being discriminated against at Mt. Dora High School. Liberty Counsel is a notoriously anti-gay legal group that is also currently fighting several lawsuits arguing for marriage equality in Florida.
While non-curricular clubs are not banned in the Lake County School District at the high school level, the lawsuit alleges that the FCA’s classification of non-curricular is what Mt. Dora High School officials are relying on in order to discriminate against the FCA. The District divides high school clubs into curricular, which related directly to class work; co-curricular, which “use student’s [sic] knowledge or curriculum to develop and expand their critical thinking, politic ability, leadership ability, post-secondary educational, and employability [sic] skills;” and non-curricular.
According to the lawsuit, curricular and co-curricular clubs are treated equally but non-curricular clubs are denied certain privileges such as displaying fliers, making announcements over the school’s public address system, a section in the yearbook and a page on the District’s website.
“Defendants’ Policy and classification is a scheme devised for purposes of discriminating against the FCA Club,” the lawsuit reads.
The suit further claims that other non-curricular clubs enjoy privileges denied to the FCA.
The ACLU and the Liberty Counsel’s lawsuits also have parallels in how they argue against the District’s school club policies. Both lawsuits cite the First Amendment and the Equal Access Act, which requires federally-funded secondary schools to provide equal access to extracurricular clubs.
“Equal Access means exactly what it says – equal access to every school facility used by other clubs,” said Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel founder and chairman, in a media release.
The gay/anti-gay ties don’t end there. Plaintiffs listed in the lawsuit are the FCA club itself, four individual students and the club’s faculty adviser, Jerry Buell, a teacher who made national headlines in 2011. After learning marriage equality had become legal in New York, Buell posted to Facebook that it made him want to “vomit” and called gay marriage a “cesspool.” He was suspended from the classroom and the investigation revealed other fundamentalist behavior, such as Buell’s habit of injecting scripture wherever he could at the school, from his online district profile to his syllabus. Buell was represented by the Liberty Counsel in his fight to get back his job. He headed back into the classroom after orders to scrub away the religious messages.
Now, they’re arguing that Buell is also a victim of discrimination against the FCA, as teachers who serve as advisers to student clubs get paid a stipend. According to the lawsuit, Buell was paid prior to the 2008-2009 school year, but hasn’t been paid his stipend since then.
“Defendants have refused to pay Buell a faculty stipend for advising the FCA Club, because the Club is religious,” the lawsuit reads, and states Buell is owed $3,000 in damages.
Although both the Liberty Counsel’s lawsuit and the ACLU’s lawsuit have similar goals, according to ACLU staff attorney Daniel Tilley, the court’s ruling in the FCA case will likely not affect the current GSA case, as the ACLU’s argument in that case hinges on whether Carver Middle School would be defined as a “secondary school” under the Equal Access Act. If the judge rules middle schools are secondary schools, it would open the door for non-curricular clubs at Lake County’s middle schools.
Tilley noted that even though the District has different school club policies for high schools and middle schools, “they’re both problematic.”
“We absolutely support the FCA having access to all the benefits of other clubs,” Tilley said. “We support the free speech rights of all students.”
He said the FCA and the GSA could be considered allies as well, as they both play an important role in preventing bullying.
“There’s an easy way out of this litigation for the district and that is to draft a rational school clubs policy that supports basic student speech rights,” Tilley said.
As far as the GSA case, Tilley said they’re in the middle of the discovery period, when attorneys on both sides request information from opposing counsel.
The Lake County School district did not respond to requests for comment.
