Three Kentucky students will have their day in court tomorrow as the Sixth
Circuit Court of Appeals hears augments on their behalf regarding the
previous shutdown of anti-harassment training in Boyd County, Kentucky.
With the assistance of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Morrison
v. Boyd County Board of Education will go forward with arguments regarding
the Ashland school students whose attempts to organize a gay-straight
alliance.
Three former Boyd County High School students, Libby Fugett, William
Carter, and Sarah Alcorn first began the first efforts toward forming a
gay-straight alliance club in March 2002. Their intentions were to counter
rampant anti-gay harassment occurring at the school at that time.
The school district agreed to implement an anti-harassment training and
policy in 2004 after a federal judge found that there was a widespread
problem with anti-gay harassment in the school, including one incident in
which students in an English class stated that they needed to "take all
the f***ing faggots out in the back woods and kill them."
Prior rulings in this case resulted in policies that resulted in claims by
the anti-gay
Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), an organization based in Arizona whose
stated purpose, as posted on their Web site, is as follows:
ADF attorneys claim that the previous ruling infringes on student rights
to religious freedom and free speech rights by restraining their ability
to voice views antagonistic to homosexuality. The ACLU agrees that all
students should have the right to freedom of expression with regard to
their opinions on homosexuality.
The organization’s activism focuses on curtailing women’s
reproductive freedom (“pro-life”) issues, opposing hate crimes
legislation, and other cases where they feel that Christian values have
been challenged.
Sharon McGowan, staff attorney at the ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual
Transgender Project, will argue the case before the court in Cincinnati.
Ken Choe, senior staff attorney at the Project and David Friedman, general
counsel at the ACLU of Kentucky, will assist in these efforts as well.
Additional information about the Morrison case is available at http://www.aclu.org/lgbt/youth/25063res20050428.html.
Information about the first case, Boyd High GSA v. Boyd Co. Board of
Education, is available at http://www.aclu.org/lgbt/youth/25060res20050302.html.
