Ex-Cheerleader Loses Lawsuit Against District : Court: Judge rejects her claim that she was victim of sex discrimination in Irvine schools when she was dropped from squad after failing class.

An Orange County Superior Court judge on Thursday rejected a former high school student’s claim that she was a victim of sex discrimination when school officials dropped her from the cheerleading squad for failing a chemistry class.

Melissa Fontes, 18, of Corona del Mar contended in her lawsuit that the “no F” policy at Woodbridge High School in Irvine unfairly discriminated against girls because it set higher academic standards for cheerleaders than for male athletes.

However, attorney Pamela A. Dempsey, who represented the defendant, the Irvine Unified School District, argued that the policy is “gender neutral” because both boys and girls are allowed to participate in cheerleading and athletics.

Judge Robert Gardner, a retired jurist who presided over the two-day, non-jury trial, agreed with the school district and rejected Fontes’ arguments in a biting seven-page opinion.

“This case is a sorry vehicle to advance a worthy cause,” Gardner wrote.

The judge also ruled that there was no “fundamental right” to extracurricular activities and even criticized Fontes for failing her science class.

“Anyone can get a ‘D,’ but it takes an all-out application of irresponsibility to get an ‘F,’ ” he wrote.

Gardner agreed with the school district’s argument, saying it is “entirely proper” to “establish higher standards” for cheerleaders because their year-round activities give them higher “visibility” and “more responsibilities” than participants in seasonal athletic programs.

After receiving a copy of the opinion, Fontes and her attorney, Bonnie K. Lawley, held a press conference to criticize the judge’s comments.

Fontes, who is now a student at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, said: “It’s kind of hard to accept. Our evidence was so clear-cut. . . . It was obviously discrimination.”

“We’re very disappointed,” Lawley said. “The court apparently considered this case to be trivial and did not take it seriously.”

Lawley also charged that the judge’s ruling punishes cheerleaders while allowing male-dominated athletic programs to get away with lower academic standards to satisfy school officials’ desires to field competitive interscholastic teams.

Athletes are required to maintain a 2.0 grade-point average and to have passed at least four courses the previous quarter, whereas cheerleaders are required to have maintained a 2.5 average over the past two semesters and to have not failed any course the previous quarter.

Fontes, who was co-captain of the cheerleading squad as a junior, was dropped from the program in 1990 after failing a chemistry course. She was dropped despite having a 2.9 grade-point average. Fontes told reporters that she failed the course because she had been involved in a traffic accident that disabled her sister and was under a lot of stress.

After Fontes filed her lawsuit in October, 1990, the school district changed its policy slightly to include the higher academic standards in the student government program, allegedly because of its similar high visibility and leadership roles, Lawley said.

During the trial, a “sex equity” expert who testified on Fontes’ behalf said that the school’s policy was representative of a widespread problem of unequal standards for boys and girls participating in extracurricular activities.

Phyllis Lerner, a consultant to the state Department of Education on sex equity issues, said that the higher standards are because cheerleaders are almost always female.

In his ruling, however, Judge Gardner said he found “Ms. Lerner’s testimony to be completely unpersuasive.” He said that he could “find no sexual discrimination in this case.”

Gardner added that he was not unsympathetic to true incidents of sex discrimination.

“I would like to say that in my humble opinion, women have been getting the dirty end of the stick from men since the beginning of history,” he wrote. “Progress has been made, but not enough.”

Thursday’s defeat was the second blow to Fontes’ lawsuit, which had sought no monetary damages, only that the district policy be changed. Last year, a federal judge dismissed the case after determining that Fontes’ civil rights had not been violated.

Despite the setbacks, Fontes said she will continue to fight for her rights, even though “my cheerleading days are over.”

She said that she plans to appeal the ruling through the courts “until we get a fair decision.”

“This affects a lot of girls out there, and I wouldn’t wish this on anybody,” she said. “Nobody has addressed the issues. They dismiss it as a trivial thing just when they hear the word cheerleader. They think it’s not important.”

Fontes added that her ordeal with the school district has been “awful.”

“It ruined my whole memory of my high school years,” she said.