WEBB CITY, Mo. (AP) – A group of Webb City high school students were sent home after they wore homemade gay-pride T-shirts in support of a classmate who is at the center of a legal dispute over the school district’s dress code.

Ron Lankford, superintendent of Webb City R-7 School District, said students were given the option of changing their shirt or going home. Seven students went home, while three agreed to change.

“It was their choice,” Lankford said. “I think our administrators handled it correctly.”

Students made the shirts in support of Brad Mathewson, a 16-year-old classmate who is gay. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit against the southwest Missouri school district on Nov. 23 for prohibiting Mathewson from wearing gay pride-themed T-shirts.

Mathewson also was given the choice of changing or going home when he wore T-shirts to class from the Gay-Straight Alliance at his former high school in Fayetteville, Ark.

School officials have said the shirts were disruptive and therefore a violation of school dress code.

The ACLU is basing its case on the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in a 1969 case, Tinker v. Des Moines. In that case, the court ruled schools cannot force students to give up their right to freedom of expression.

Lankford said the school district can substantiate its claims that Mathewson’s shirts were disruptive and distracting, but he did not give details.

LaStaysha Myers, 15, said an administrator spotted the students shortly after they arrived at school and told them to report to the principal’s office.

The front of the shirts made by Myers stated, “If this shirt offends you, look the other way.”

The back, among other messages, stated, “We have the right to be who we want to be” and “We support gay rights.” Other students donned shirts with messages such as “I’m gay and I’m proud” and “I have a gay friend and I’m proud of him.”

Dick Kurtenbach, executive director of the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri, said sending the students home “perpetuates the same violation of rights that took place in Brad’s case.”

Kurtenbach said the ACLU is asking the school to enforce its dress code equally. Shirts promoting drugs, alcohol or violence clearly violate the dress code, he said.