Harassed for Being Gay, Students Are Taking Schools to Court

For six miserable years after he acknowledged his sexual orientation to himself and his classmates, Mark Iversen was taunted and even assaulted by other students while school officials looked the other way.

Now the gay teen is taking a stand, taking on the suburban Kent School District in federal court. He is backed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, a 1996 federal-court precedent in Wisconsin and a new application of Title IX, the federal legislation that prohibits sexual discrimination and harassment in schools.

“I hope other school districts see this case and do something, so that when students complain they’ll do something to help the kids,” says Iversen, 18.

He and other gay teens have options now because of Jamie Nabozny, who won a $900,000 settlement last year from a school district in Ashland, Wis. That case marked the first time jurors held administrators liable for failing to address anti-gay abuse.

Nabozny, 21, sued the district where he had endured years of taunts and threats that ultimately led to violence. Jurors agreed that district officials had a responsibility to protect him and had failed to do so. They found the officials had violated Nabozny’s constitutional guarantee of equal protection.

Nabozny was routinely spat upon and beaten up at school. Students subjected him to a mock rape and kicked him in the belly so many times he needed abdominal surgery.

School officials treated him as if he were the problem, Nabozny said in testimony submitted to Congress in December 1995. They moved him into separate classes, enrolled him in a special-education class, and made him sit with elementary school students on the bus so older students couldn’t get at him.

“Instead of teaching the value of respect for others, the school taught that if you are different you are the problem, and you are the one that has to be separated out and hidden,” he said.

“The Nabozny case sent a ringing message to school districts throughout the country that, henceforward, harassment of lesbian and gay teens in schools would be taken seriously,” said David Buckel of New York, who helped pursue the case for the gay-rights group Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund.

In Illinois, an attorney used state law to win a settlement for a student who had been harassed. That lawyer relied on Nabozny, though the laws at issue differed, Buckel said.

In California, a 12-year-old student and his mother have sued a San Francisco-area school for its alleged failure to protect the boy from verbal and physical abuse.

In March, the U.S. Education Department issued examples of anti-gay harassment that are prohibited under Title IX. That change is significant because schools that don’t enforce the law risk losing federal funds.

In Arkansas, the severe beating of a gay student by other teens has prompted a discrimination complaint that could lead to the first gay-harassment lawsuit under Title IX.

“Nabozny made everybody sit up and take notice,” Buckel said. “Title IX makes them stand up and salute.”

State laws are beginning to reflect the shift. In May, Connecticut became the sixth state to include at least some protections for gay students in its education laws.

Word of the changing approach to gay students’ rights is getting around.

“We’ve been getting a lot more cooperation from administrators,” said Kevin Jennings, executive director of the New York-based Gay, Lesbian and Straight Teachers Network.

“Administrators who thought they could brush this issue aside are getting a lot more nervous,” said Jennings, whose group was invited to make a presentation before the National School Board Assn. last spring--a first.

Iversen attorney Jim Talbot said he would have taken the case before the Nabozny precedent. But he said the Wisconsin precedent makes him much more optimistic about a favorable outcome.

“It’s quite clear from what Mark and his mother have put together over six years how the school district turned a blind eye to the harassment Mark was suffering,” he said.

The Kent district, like the one in Wisconsin, has an anti-harassment policy intended to protect all of its students.

Iversen’s lawsuit mirrors Nabozny’s in that respect. The district’s failure to enforce its anti-harassment policy in Iversen’s case means officials violated his right to equal protection under the law, the lawsuit says.

Iversen graduated from Kentwood High School in Kent this year. But for years before that, beginning in junior high, he endured anti-gay taunts.

The harassment escalated--at one point culminating in a group beating--because his tormentors could count on administrators to look the other way, he said.

“At first, it just started with name-calling and people talking,” Iversen said. “But then it was the physical stuff.”

That appears to be the pattern: If unchallenged, epithets and physical intimidation eventually can lead to violence.

The ACLU filed a lawsuit on Iversen’s behalf in U.S. District Court on July 23, naming as defendants the Kent School District, two top administrators and three school principals.

District and school officials have declined to comment.

Although he had emotional support from a few sympathetic teachers, the system did nothing, Iversen said.

Some teachers watched in silence. Others did worse.

Among the incidents cited in Iversen’s lawsuit:

* A student called him names and used a broomstick to push him into the lockers. Two nearby teachers did nothing.

* A teacher banned him from her class and flunked him when he tried to report harassment by other students.

* One teacher told him, “I already have 20 girls in my class. I don’t need another.”

Iversen says he suffered from stomachaches, headaches and depression, and eventually considered suicide.

The name-calling and physical intimidation culminated last October, when eight students assaulted Iversen while about 30 students watched, he said.

“After that, I had enough,” he said. “That was it--I didn’t want to go through any more.”

His mother, Alice Iversen, said she called and met with school officials for years, to no avail. Eventually she started keeping a written record of the incidents.

“We didn’t think it was necessary at first because we thought someone would help,” she said in a recent interview. “I kept telling him, ‘Things will get better, someone will help out.’ ”

But no one did.

Talbot considers Alice Iversen’s written account one of the strong points of her son’s case. There was no such record in the Nabozny case. “It’s beyond people hassling him,” Talbot said. “We’re talking about six years of teasing, moving on to harassment, culminating in a beating.”

The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages, stricter enforcement of the anti-harassment policy and stronger protections for targeted students.