The Palmer High School Gay-Straight Alliance will be allowed to enjoy the same privileges as other school clubs following a lawsuit settlement announced today.
School officials in Colorado Springs settled Monday, agreeing to let the club meet on campus as an official student organization.
In a 2003 federal lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, members of the club accused school administrators of discriminating against them.
School officials had refused to recognize the club since 1999, the suit said. The club wanted to have announcements on the school’s public address system, hang posters freely and be pictured in the yearbook like other clubs.
Although school officials said they did not recognize the club because it was not related to the curriculum, they did recognize non-academic clubs, such as Crime Stoppers, the Sci-Fi Club, the Chess Club and the Mountain Bike Club, the ACLU said.
Sara Thomas, the Palmer High student who initiated the lawsuit, said she thought this week’s settlement was an important victory.
“Palmer is not abnormally intolerant or hateful, nor is it abnormally accepting,” said Thomas, 19, now a sophomore at Grinnell College in Iowa. “Any school, regardless of its level of tolerance, needs a gay-straight alliance to provide information to the greater school community.”
The agreement, approved by the Colorado Springs District 11 school board, rectifies that imbalance, Colorado ACLU legal director Mark Silverstein said.
The settlement also calls for a symbolic award of $10 for the student groupcq and $90,000 in legal feescq.
“This is the first time that the Gay-Straight Alliance at Palmer High School has been allowed to conduct its activities on the same terms as all other student groups,” Silverstein said.
Similar clubs already exist at 50 Colorado high schools, according to the ACLU. Their mission is to reduce harassment, discrimination and bias over sexual orientation.
School board member Craig Cox, who cast the lone opposing vote, said he believes the settlement leaves the district vulnerable to future litigation over student groups. The board relented over concerns that continuing the legal fight would be too expensive, he said.
“That’s fine and dandy, looking at the short view, but how do we ever determine whether a club is too outrageous for the district?” he said. “Five years from now, we’re going to look back and say ‘Whoops.”‘
But the district has no legal right to make that kind of judgment, which was the crux of the lawsuit, Silverstein said.
“The law already forbids the school from discriminating on that kind of a basis,” he said. “Once the school allows any student club to meet that is not directly connected to the curriculum, then it has to allow all student clubs to meet.”
Staff writer Jim Hughes can be reached at 303-820-1244 or jhughes@denverpost.com.
