Judges rules in favor of Holmes student in PdL case

PANAMA CITY - Heather Gillman can wear her T-shirts.

U.S. District Judge Richard Smoak decided Tuesday the Holmes County School Board violated Gillman's right to free speech in November and ordered the board to alert students in writing that they are allowed to express their support for the equal treatment of gays in an appropriate and non-disruptive way.

"I find that the core message here is of tolerance and fairness," Smoak said.

He added that administrators missed a chance in September to address students' issues about homosexuality.

"This could have been an opportunity for leadership, an opportunity for understanding and civil discourse and a learning opportunity for tolerance and diversity. Unfortunately, those opportunities were missed," Smoak said.

He said demonstrations at Ponce de Leon High School in September were not so disruptive to allow the school to suppress students' rights to express their opinions on gay issues.

The ruling went into effect immediately.

Gillman, 17, a Ponce de Leon High School junior, sued the Holmes County School Board last year because it prohibited her from wearing T-shirts she had made in support of gay rights. Gillman made the shirts after her ninth-grade cousin, who is openly gay, was suspended along with nine other students for disruptions they caused in September.

Her case went to a bench trial Monday and Tuesday.

Students testified Tuesday that those disruptions amounted to shouting "gay pride" in the hallways, arguing with other students, chanting slogans while walking the track during physical education, organizing a possible walkout of an assembly that never occurred, graffiti and passing notes in class. Smoak pressed the attorneys during their examinations of the witnesses to focus on disruptions that were outside the norm for middle and high school students.

He said the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled suppression of students' constitutional right to free speech can occur only if there have been "material and substantial" disruptions to the educational process.

"Giggling, whispering and passing notes does not meet that standard," Smoak told the lawyers.

One student said the disruptions were intended to anger Principal David Davis, because the students believed Davis had suspended Gillman's cousin because she was gay. Witnesses said Monday and Tuesday that Davis expressed anti-gay sentiments to them.

"He told me, 'If there was a man in your house and you were going to church, you wouldn't be having these gay issues,'" Theresa Cottle said Tuesday as to a conversation she had with Davis about her daughter, who was partaking in the demonstrations.

Holmes County School Superintendant Steven Griffin told Smoak that Gillman's shirts, which had slogans such as, "Gay? Fine by me," "Gay Pride" and "I'm straight but I vote gay," were banned from the school only because they were linked to the September disruptions, and the School Board has no policy banning pro-gay messages.

Smoak said in his ruling that Griffin's investigation of the September incidents was so shoddy it "amounted to no investigation at all."

"I did not hear any evidence of any effort by the (school board) to deal with this by any other means less drastic than banning the speech and suspending the students," Smoak said.

The School Board's lawyer, Holly Dincman, told the judge the disruptions the students described met the appellant courts' rulings on this issue. She said her interpretation of the standard was any disruption that took students' time away from learning "even in a small way."

Dincman objected to Smoak's limits on her ability to show the small disruptions and said she would prepare her appeal based in part on those limits.

After Smoak's ruling, Dincman said the School Board would do everything possible to comply with the order.

Gillman's attorney, Garrard Beeney, told the press this case was not breaking new legal ground but would support existing law and influence future cases.

Beeney told the students assembled outside the courthouse they now are responsible for expressing themselves properly.

"With freedom comes responsibility," he said. "You have to live up to the judge's faith in you."