MIAMI (AP) – A school district in rural Florida must allow a Gay-Straight Alliance to meet on campus and must provide for the well-being of gay and straight students, a federal judge ruled, capping a nearly two-year legal battle over First Amendment rights.

Students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,” Judge K. Michael Moore said in a written ruling issued July 29, quoting another case.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of Okeechobee High School senior Yasmin Gonzalez in 2006 after the school principal said the club could not meet on campus. The school gave various arguments, claiming first there were too many clubs, and later that the school had an abstinence-only policy.

Moore, quoting another case, said the school board failed to show that barring the club’s “tolerance based message,” was “caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint.”

Five students attended the club’s most recent meeting in June, but as many as 20 have attended other meetings.

American Civil Liberties Union officials said the school district has “argued everything from the old standby that gay people are child molesters to the argument that talking about being gay might turn straight students gay,” said Robert Rosenwald, the lead counsel on the case for the Florida ACLU. “Thankfully, the court saw through this and agreed with us.”

Barbara Weller, an attorney for the school board, said the school never had a problem with the club promoting tolerance, but did want “to restrict club discussions of sexual issues that the school is concerned could lead to premature sexualization and risky sexual experimentation on the part of students.”

Earlier this year, a Florida judge said a Panhandle principal led a “relentless crusade” against gay and lesbian students at Ponce de Leon High School and violated their First Amendment rights by trying to prevent them from wearing gay pride clothing, stickers and buttons.

Gonzalez, who now attends Indian River Community College, has said she was plagued by discrimination as a lesbian trying to find her way in Okeechobee’s small town of conservative values. One teacher told her homosexuals should die; kids hanging out the bus window would shout, “Are you the one that’s gay?”

Her lawsuit cites the 1984 federal Equal Access Act, which was initially pushed by evangelical Christians after some public schools banned after-school prayer meetings and other religious gatherings. It says that if a public school allows any extracurricular activities to meet on campus it must allow all groups to do the same.

“You shouldn’t have to grow up feeling like you’re alone,” Gonzalez said when the suit was filed. “It was just terrible. I saw that something was wrong and I’m trying to change it.”