By Carrie Baker

SAN FRANCISCO, April 22, 2004 – A U.S. Appeals court ruled on Thursday that a school in San Diego, California, was, in fact, able to tell one of their students to remove a t-shirt with the slogan “homosexuality is shameful.” The student sued the school based on a violation of his freedoms of speech and religion, but the U.S.9th Circuit Court of Appeals backed the San Diego school’s decision by a 2-1 decision.

The officials at the school had concerns that the shirt could create more tension within the school between gay and straight students. Judge Stephen Reinhardt said that [students] “who may be injured by verbal assaults on the basis of a core identifying characteristic such as religion, race, or sexual orientation, have a right to be free from such attacks while on school campuses.” Reinhardt added that “the demeaning of young gay and lesbian students in a school environment is detrimental not only to their psychological health and well-being, but also to their educational development.”

The dissenting Judge Alex Kozinski had an argument against Reinhardt saying that “the types of speech that could be banned by the school authorities under the hate policy are practically without limit. It gives any one with a thin skin a heckler’s veto – something the Supreme Court has not approved in the past.”
To this argument Reinhardt responded, “Perhaps our dissenting colleague believes that one can condemn homosexuality without condemning homosexuals. If so, he is wrong. To say that homosexuality is shameful is to say that gays and lesbians are shameful. It is not necessary to advance that argument to young students trying to obtain a fair and full education in our public schools.”