Federal appeals court debates law barring gay student groups from campus
Jan. 28, 1997
ATLANTA -- In a closely watched case about the rights of gay students, a federal appeals court today heard a challenge to an Alabama law seeking to keep lesbian, gay and bisexual student groups off university campuses.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the challenge, told a panel of the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals that the law is in clear violation of the students’ First Amendment rights to free speech and association.
“Lesbian and gay students should be able to meet and discuss their common interests like everyone else,” said Matt Coles, director of the ACLU’s Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, who presented the argument today. “Colleges should be a place of open discourse and equal opportunity. This law contradicts that purpose, and seeks to exclude lesbian and gay students from the fabric of campus life.”
Alabama had appealed a lower court decision delivered a year ago that the statute is “naked viewpoint discrimination” and wholly unenforceable.
In that decision, U.S. District Judge Myron H. Thompson called the law an “open effort by the state legislature to limit the sexuality discussion in institutions of higher learning to only one viewpoint: that of heterosexual people.” “This viewpoint limitation,” he added, “violates the First Amendment.”
The contested statute, Section 16-1-28 of the Alabama’s Education Code, sought to bar “any college or university from spending public funds or using public facilities ... to sanction, recognize, or support any group that promotes a lifestyle or actions prohibited by the sodomy and sexual misconduct laws” of the state.
The law swept through the Alabama legislature in 1992 after officials at Auburn University granted official recognition to a gay student group there. The ACLU brought its challenge when the state invoked the recently enacted law against the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Alliance at the University of South Alabama, a state-run college in Mobile.
The alliance had sought official recognition from the university in order to further its mission to create a supportive environment for gay, lesbian and bisexual students, as well as to foster discussion about homophobia and AIDS prevention.
Judge Thompson wrote that because of the law, the group “has been denied on-campus banking facilities, disqualified from receiving funding, and subjected to an intrusive and highly personal fact-finding investigation.”
Alan Clampett, president of the alliance, said the ruling “lifted the cloud” over the group and helped the group “earn respect on campus as we continue to educate other students about our call for equality.”
Arguments in the case were heard today by a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit comprised of Judges Joel F. Dubina, Susan H. Black and William C. O’Kelley.
The ACLU Lesbian and Gay Rights Project is joined in the case by the ACLU of Alabama, with Fern Singer of the Birmingham-based law firm of Sirote & Permutt serving as its cooperating attorney.
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