The California State Bar should prevent law schools from recruiting in California if they discriminate against gays and lesbians and must discontinue granting them accreditation.

The California Bar is a leader in advocating for GLBT matters, and it’s time for it to stop law schools – such as Regent University, Liberty, Brigham Young, Notre Dame and Pepperdine – from effectively prohibiting gay and lesbian applicants.

Such evangelical Christian law schools discriminate in this way by prohibiting sex outside of marriage, among other stipulations in their so-called “non-discrimination” clauses.

Since the Bar meets this week in San Diego, it’s a good time for it to discuss banning lawyers who graduate from these schools from practicing in California. (Unfortunately, the meeting is at the boycotted Manchester Grand Hyatt; despite attempts to change locales, the Bar couldn't do so without accruing $500,000 in damages.)

California already makes it an ethical duty for attorneys to treat gay and lesbian clients and adversaries with respect and dignity; in that, lawyers may not refuse to serve a client because of that person’s sexual orientation. So it’s not in Californians’ best interest to train lawyers at schools where prejudice is the practice, as such lawyers will perpetuate it in our courts.

Further, the State of California forbids contracts between state agencies and groups that refuse to engage in nondiscrimination. State Attorney General Jerry Brown could prohibit these schools from even advertising in California.

The law in this area is fairly clear: Several federal courts have opined that there is no distinction between “discriminating against gays who are sexually active versus those who are not;” and the California Supreme Court unanimously held two years ago that state agencies may withdraw privileges to groups that fail to follow California’s policy against anti-gay bias.

Preventing such schools from recruiting in California is a feasible objective not only because our laws support doing so, but also because of our judicial system’s record of countering prejudice. California courts (along with Bar associations throughout the country) clobbered racism in the ’70s, when various state and federal agencies agreed to deny funds and tax benefits to Bob Jones University because it practiced segregation. The U.S. Supreme Court held that the nation’s interest in eradicating discrimination based upon race trumped the religious school’s religious freedom claim.

So it should be quite easy to discredit schools that get around non-discrimination laws by admitting gays as long as they don’t have gay sex and that are subsidized by state tax dollars while they encourage homophobic religious and political views.

The State of California should remove its cap on parental liability when minor children willfully commit hate crimes.

Currently, parents are liable under California law to pay up to $25,000 for willful hate crimes of their minor children.

The cap necessitates that victims must go to court to litigate higher damage awards. In effect, this further victimizes them. It’s nauseating to think, for example, that the parents of a child brutalized by a hate crime must endure not only the attack but also an expensive and emotionally taxing litigation.

Further, the cap necessitates that attorneys target parents’ homeowners insurance policies if they want to win more money for victims.

Homeowners’ insurance policies provide coverage only for insureds’ negligent acts. So to win a claim, attorneys must prove that perpetrators’ parents were negligent. In other words, they must prove that the perpetrators’ parents should have known that the child engaged in harmful acts against others but negligently failed to take reasonable measures to prevent the child from doing so.

Sometimes this approach works; however, often it doesn’t.

It shouldn’t be necessary for parents to prove negligence. And being beat up at school, physically or emotionally, should not necessitate bringing a lawsuit to recover damages from school districts.

If the state removed the cap and created a “School Bullying and Hate Crime Victims’ Fund” (separate from the California Crime Victims’ Fund), it would entitle victims to damages when children willfully commit hate crimes. Much like workers’ compensation, there should be a simple and accessible remedy for victims of assaults at school. The system should cover medical bills incurred by victims, who could then seek non-economic damages in court. School districts could seek reimbursement from the parents of the responsible teens.