SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) – Attorneys for a lesbian student who sued an Orange County school district and her principal for revealing her sexuality to her mother have asked a judge to award their client as much as $1.3 million in damages.

Charlene Nguon, 18, filed the lawsuit against the Garden Grove Unified School District last year alleging her privacy rights were violated.

She also claimed she was singled out and punished by Santiago High School principal Ben Wolf and other school officials for hugging and kissing her girlfriend on campus.

During closing arguments in the trial on Dec. 12, Nguon’s lawyer Dan Stormer asked U.S. District Judge James Selna for $300,000 to $1.3 million in damages.

“It is a significant impact in one’s life to be punished for who you are,” Stormer said. “That stigma never goes away.”

But Dennis Walsh, an attorney representing the school district, said Wolf merely told Nguon’s mother that her daughter was being disciplined for “kissing another girl.”

“It’s not a blatant disclosure of sexual orientation,” Walsh said. “Schools want to provide as much information as possible to parents about a suspension.”

The judge was expected to issue a ruling within six weeks.

The suit also claims discrimination, contending that Nguon, now a community college student, was suspended several times because she ignored orders by Wolf to stop hugging and kissing her girlfriend.

Heterosexual couples engaging in similar behavior weren’t disciplined, the suit contends.

The suit also seeks an admission that the district violated Nguon’s civil rights and a policy change preventing officials from revealing a student’s sexual orientation.

Orange County’s Garden Grove district had argued that because Nguon openly kissed and hugged her girlfriend on campus, she had no expectation of privacy.

Nguon’s behavior was not prohibited in the school handbook, she claims.

“It was horrible. I was discriminated against by the administrators,” said Nguon, who is represented by the ACLU and filed the suit with her mother and the Gay-Straight Alliance Network club.

Nguon alleges that her grades, once straight A’s, fell after she was forced in March 2005 to transfer from Santiago High School to Bolsa Grande High School, a move that increased her commute from a short walk to a four-and-a-half-mile bike ride.

“Unfortunately, for Principal Ben Wolf and other staff at Santiago High, all of Charlene’s accomplishments and exemplary qualities are overshadowed by one fact: that she is a lesbian,” according to the lawsuit.

A judge ruled on Nov. 28 of last year that Nguon had “sufficiently alleged a legally protected privacy interest in information about her sexual orientation.”

“This is the first court ruling we’re aware of where a judge has recognized that a student has a right not to have her sexual orientation disclosed to her parents, even if she is out of the closet at school,” said Christine Sun, an ACLU attorney who brought the case following last year’s ruling. “Coming out is a very serious decision that should not be taken away from anyone, and disclosure can cause a lot of harm to students who live in an unsupportive home.”

Nguon’s mother, Crystal Chhun, said, “The person to decide when and how to talk with our family about this should have been my daughter, not her principal.”