Following Pride Flag Ban, ACLU Sues Indiana High School for Restricting LGBTQ Club

Students at Pendleton Heights High School in central Indiana are taking a stand against their school, where the principal said their Gay-Straight-Alliance group wasn’t an “official” club. The GSA and ACLU of Indiana is now suing the school, saying they blocked the LGBTQ student group from privileges that other clubs at the school enjoy, including publicizing their meetings and raising funds on school property.

The GSA and ACLU argue that the club’s First Amendment and equal protection rights are being violated, along with the Equal Access Act, a 1984 law requiring schools receiving federal funding to provide equal access to all extracurricular activities, originally pushed by Christian activists looking to protect Bible study groups in schools.

“This group aims to create an environment that provides support to students, during a time that otherwise might be increasingly difficult for LGBTQ students,” says Kit Malone of the ACLU of Indiana. “The differential treatment aimed at Pendleton Heights Gay-Straight Alliance by administrators is unwarranted, and these students must be treated in the same manner that all other student groups are treated.”

It seems as though this line of action on part of Pendleton Heights and its leaders is on brand; the same school banned teachers from displaying Pride flags earlier this year, with Principal Connie Ricket saying she wanted to make sure the school was a “welcoming environment for all” and that Pride flags would make anti-LGBTQ students feel unwelcome, as they are, in her words, “political paraphernalia.”

School board trustees president Bill Hutton also said that being LGBTQ is a choice and compared LGBTQ people to white supremacists in an email statement sent to students, parents, and staff.

“If an LGBTQ+ flag is allowed to be displayed, then any other group would have the same ability,” he said at the time. “That could include such flags as supporting white supremacy, which is in direct conflict with LGBTQ+.”

South Madison Community School officials said that the district is not anti-LGBTQ, but that teachers are supposed to “remain neutral” and not engage in “political speech.”

In an interview with IndyStar, student Bryce Axel-Adams, and creator of an online petition from earlier this year to allow the display of Pride flags at the school again, spoke about how good it felt before the ban to see a Pride flag and understand there were supportive faculty at the school. He said it isn’t easy to be gay in a small Indiana town, and prohibiting the flag has been upsetting.

“We’re tired of having so little representation,” he says. “We’re tired of having people act like our feelings don’t matter, like our mental health doesn’t matter.”

Parents joined students in the conversation on the flag back in May, with parent James Wills speaking out and defending his bisexual daughter, Tai.

“They consider it political propaganda when it’s not,” Wills says. “It’s literally just human rights, equal rights. You trust the school with your children, and it’s supposed to be, you know, a safe place. They’re supposed to be stood up for, and you expect that, so it’s definitely very frustrating to see … that they’re not.”

“I think there’s definitely a need for that flag to be there,” says Christina Wills, Tai’s mom. “It’s kind of a silent way of saying that there’s a safe space for them.”

Unless the school starts to clean up their policy, it’s looking like Pendleton Heights and South Madison Community Schools are making it abundantly clear where they stand, even if their restrictive choices make for an unsafe experience for their LGBTQ students and families.