Club Goes to Court to Meet Now

Lawyers representing the two teenage founders of a gay students support group filed in court Wednesday to force the Orange school board to allow the group to meet on campus.

Two national legal groups filed a motion asking a U.S. District Court judge to grant them a preliminary injunction at a hearing set for Jan. 24. That action would allow the students to hold meetings at El Modena High School while their federal civil rights lawsuit wends its way through the courts.

“We’re asking that, while the lawsuit is pending, the court require that these students be given the same rights accorded all other student groups at the school--and that includes the right to meet at the school during noninstructional time,” said Judith E. Schaeffer, legal director for the People for the American Way Foundation, one of the groups representing the student plaintiffs.

The Orange school board unanimously barred the club from meeting on campus last month, on the grounds that students were likely to discuss sexual topics that are highly regulated by the state’s Education Code.

The students first proposed the club--where gay and straight teens meet to talk about coming out, discrimination and tolerance--at the beginning of the school year. However, the club’s few meetings have taken place outdoors, across the street from school grounds.

An injunction would prevent the students from losing any more time, Schaeffer added.

“I’m sure the school board would be delighted to have this matter drag on until the plaintiffs are in college,” she said. “They’ve already lost an entire semester of their high school lives. . . . We don’t want more of the school year to go by while their 1st Amendment rights are being violated.”

Reached late Wednesday, the Orange Unified School District’s lawyer said he had not seen the motion seeking a preliminary injunction. However, he viewed the student request for an injunction as unreasonable, because the teens have been offered classroom space as long as they they don’t talk about topics the school board deems taboo.

“It they don’t discuss the issues regulated by the [California] Ed Code, such as sex, sexual education and sexually transmitted diseases, we told them they were welcome to meet under those circumstances,” said Los Angeles attorney James Bowles, who represents the school district.

Club founders Anthony Colin, a sophomore, and Heather Zetin, a junior, have resisted school efforts to change the club’s mission statement or limit discussion topics because they do not believe other groups--including the school’s Christian Club--are required to do likewise.

At issue are two interpretations of the 1984 federal Equal Access Act, a landmark law upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, that paved the was for Bible clubs to meet on school grounds outside of class time.

Backed by the People for the American Way, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and the law firm Irell & Manella, the teens argue that act mandates that if El Modena allows one non-curricular club to meet on school grounds--as it does--then others must be afforded the same opportunity. Any mandates of the state’s Education Code, they further contend, are irrelevant, because that set of laws applies to instructional matters and the federal law specifically allows students to engage in speech that is not and could not be sanctioned by a school, such as prayer.

The school district contends the group is a curricular club--such as the French club--that would be exempt from the equal access law and subject to state rules. Even though club members say they have no intention of discussing sex, Orange trustees also say that allowing teenagers to teach one another about sex would interfere with the school’s duty to provide appropriate sexual education.