MISSION VIEJO : Lawsuit Puts District on Horns of a Diablo

A group of Mission Viejo High School students and their parents filed a lawsuit Friday against Saddleback Valley Unified School District, alleging that school officials violated the students’ civil rights by censorship.

Among the allegations, the 10-page suit claims that school officials made students remove clothes or baseball caps bearing the insignia of a red horned devil, a school mascot that officials replaced with a bulldog in 1986.

Without giving specific examples, the suit also alleges school officials censored school plays, music performed by the marching band, and the speech of student candidates in school elections.

Those who defied school officials and continued to wear the devil logo were intimidated “with threats of suspension and discipline,” the lawsuit stated.

Faculty members who support the students’ cause in seeking to wear the logo were replaced with new staff members “who continue to harass and annoy students who do not comply with defendants’ unlawful censorship policies,” the suit states.

Sandie Gonzales, who along with her son, Juan, is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said Friday that the devil mascot is but “a symptom of the underlying problem” at the 1,740-student campus. School officials, she said, have had a history of repressing “constitutional freedom on the campus.”

The lawsuit, filed by seven students and their parents in Orange County Superior Court, named Supt. Peter A. Hartman, Principal Robert Metz and five school board members as defendants.

Neither Hartman nor Metz would comment on the lawsuit Friday, saying they have not received a copy of the lawsuit and that district policy prohibits them from commenting on legal matters.

Some parents Friday denounced the lawsuit.

“I think it’s a real crying shame,” said Bev Stephenson, a parent and school employee. “I think it’s dragging down an incredible school.”

Sally Stoddard, president-elect of the campus Parent-Teacher-Student Organization, said she believes the lawsuit is the personal agenda of four or five people.

The mascot issue at the school “has torn us apart so much,” she said. “It just has to stop.”

Although Mission Viejo High School’s nickname is the Diablos--meaning devils in Spanish--school administrators banned the grim-faced mascot in 1986 after receiving complaints from parents with fundamentalist Christian beliefs.

After a six-year hiatus, the issue re-emerged last fall when students began displaying the unauthorized logo. Metz and other school officials asked them to remove or cover the image.

In April, school district officials agreed that forcing students to cover the scowling devil logo could violate constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression and said the students have the right to wear the logo to class.

However, the students claimed in the lawsuit, school officials deliberately continued to ban the logo.

The students seek unspecified general and punitive damages and a court injunction barring school officials from retaliating against those who filed the lawsuit.