KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – The American Civil Liberties Union dropped its lawsuit last week against a southwest Missouri school district after it lifted its ban on T-shirts with messages on gay rights.

The suit was filed in April after LaStaysha Myers, a 15-year-old heterosexual girl at Webb City High School, was twice punished for wearing shirts with messages of support for gays.

The Webb City R-7 School District previously filed a motion saying it intended to end its policy against such clothing. The ACLU said it got written intent last week that the district would follow through with its earlier statement and that when school resumes after summer break, students sporting such tees would not be disciplined.

“All I ever wanted was to get my school to stop silencing me and allow all students to express their opinions,” Myers said in a statement. “I’m really happy that’s finally going to happen.”

The T-shirt squabble began last fall when a student named Brad Mathewson wore a shirt from the Gay-Straight Alliance at his former school in Fayetteville, Ark. He was told either to turn the shirt inside out or to change; he instead swapped shirts with a friend, who wore it without incident the rest of the day.

A week later, Mathewson wore another T-shirt bearing the phrase, “I’m gay and I’m proud.” He left school after refusing Principal Stephen Gollhofer’s request to turn the shirt inside out and was briefly suspended.

A number of other students, including Myers, made their own T-shirts with messages in support of their friend. They were sent home when they refused to change out of shirts the school district said had caused a disruption and therefore were a violation of the dress code.

Webb City’s school superintendent, Ron Lankford, said the T-shirt ban was never about homosexuality.

“We’re not pro-gay, we’re not anti-gay,” he said. “We’re pro-kid.”

Lankford said a shirt’s message alone would not lead to another ban, but he said the district would take action if a piece of clothing causes an interruption to the school day.

“Someone that’s quietly expressing a belief that’s controversial or political – that in and of itself is not going to cause us to take action,” he said.

Rose Saxe, a New York-based attorney for the ACLU who worked on the case, said the district’s decision was “an important recognition of students’ First Amendment rights.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1969 Tinker v. Des Moines decision ruled that schools could only censor pupils’ free-speech rights if they are disruptive to education, but not if others’ reaction is the only disruption.