On April 20, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Poway High School officials acted well within the Constitution when they prohibited a student, Tyler Chase Harper, from wearing a T-shirt that was derogatory toward gays and lesbians.

The mainstream media portrayed the case as little more than a case involving the legality of a dress code. However, the case is historic and a landmark ruling that speaks volumes to the plight of GLBT students to get an education free from bias.

Writing for the court, Judge Stephen Reinhardt hit the real issue in this case. He noted that “speech that attacks high school students who are members of minority groups that have historically been oppressed, subjected to verbal and physical abuse, and made to feel inferior, serves to injure and intimidate them, as well as to damage their sense of security and interfere with their opportunity to learn.

“The demeaning of young gay and lesbian students in a school environment is detrimental not only to their psychological health and well-being, but also to their educational development,” Reinhardt wrote.

The court then noted that studies demonstrate that academic underachievement, truancy and dropouts are prevalent among gay and lesbian youth and are the probable consequences of violence and verbal and physical abuse at school.

The court noted that one study has found that among teenage victims of anti-gay discrimination, 75 percent experienced a decline in academic performance, 39 percent had truancy problems and 28 percent dropped out of school.

As for tolerating anti-gay slurs directed at students, the court noted that school officials need not tolerate verbal assaults that may destroy the self-esteem of our most vulnerable teenagers and interfere with their educational development.

To the contrary, the court pointed out that the school had a valid and lawful basis for restricting Harper’s wearing of his T-shirt on the grounds that his conduct was injurious to gay and lesbian students and interfered with their right to learn.

As for Harper’s argument that he had a right to wear his shirt in response to the Day of Silence, the court responded by noting that it did not lessen the injurious effect of his act because by participating in the gay rights event, gay and lesbian students “perforce acknowledge that their status is not universally admired or respected.”

Reinhardt added that this argument is completely without merit. The fact that gays and lesbians – or, for that matter, blacks, Jews or Latinos – recognize that they are the subject of prejudice and are not “respected” or considered equal by some in certain public schools in this country does not mean that they are not injured when the usually unspoken prejudice turns into harmful verbal conduct.

The First Amendment does not justify students launching such injurious and harmful personal attacks in either location. But the court made clear that schools cannot ban opposing points of view.

“It is essential that students have the opportunity to engage in full and open political expression, both in and out of the school environment. Engaging in controversial political speech, even when it is offensive to others, is an important right of all Americans, and learning the value of such freedoms is an essential part of a public school education. Indeed, the inculcation of the fundamental values necessary to the maintenance of a democratic political system is truly the “work of the public schools may permit, and even encourage, discussions of tolerance, equality and democracy without being required to provide equal time for student or other speech espousing intolerance, bigotry or hatred.”

The court pointed out that just because a school sponsors a Day of Religious Tolerance, it need not permit its students to wear T-shirts reading “Jews Are Christ-Killers” or “All Muslims Are Evil Doers.” Such expressions would be “wholly inconsistent with the ‘fundamental values’ of public school education,” the court noted.

Similarly, a school that permits a Day of Racial Tolerance may restrict a student from displaying a swastika or a Confederate flag. “A school has the right to teach civic responsibility and tolerance as part of its basic educational mission; it need not as a quid pro quo permit hateful and injurious speech that runs counter to that mission,” the court wrote.

The irony is that the right wing took on the Harper case to try and harm the little protections there are for GLBT students. Instead, they got an opinion from a court that is truly remarkable for GLBT students.