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Another Victory for GLBT Rights
By Jennifer Millman
February 22, 2007
What Happened? The New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously ruled Wednesday that state public schools can be held liable for failing to address repeated instances of student-on-student harassment based on perceived orientation that impair an individual's ability to benefit from an educational environment.
The Case: L.W. v. Toms River Regional Schools Board of Education--A student known as "L.W." claimed the school district did not sufficiently protect him from prolonged harassment by other students who mocked him with words such as "gay," "homo," and "fag" when he was a fourth-grader at South Toms River Elementary School in the mid-1990s; the harassment intensified throughout his middle-school education and ended when he transferred to Red Bank Regional High School his freshman year.
Court History: In 1999, L.W.'s mother filed a complaint with the N.J. Division on Civil Rights, which determined the district violated the state's antidiscrimination law. The civil-rights division director awarded L.W. $50,000 in compensatory damages and his mother $10,000 for emotional distress. An appeals panel revoked the mother's award, and the district then appealed to the state Supreme Court.
The Decision: New Jersey's Law Against Discrimination "permits a cause of action against a school district for student-to-student harassment based on an individual's perceived sexual orientation if the school district's failure to reasonably address that harassment has the effect of denying to that student any of the school's 'accommodations, advantages, facilities or privileges,'" Chief Justice James Zazzali wrote in the 36-page opinion.
"Reasonable measures are required to protect our youth, a duty that schools are more than capable of performing. Students in the classrooms are entitled to no less protection from unlawful discrimination and harassment than their adult counterparts in the workplace."
Eliza Byard, the deputy executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, www.glsen.org, told The New York Times: "Having a policy is not enough. Schools must implement their policies to ensure that each student is free from fear when entering a schoolhouse."
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