LGBT Legal Group Threatens Principal Banning Teen Lesbian Couple From Prom With Lawsuit

‘Discrimination, Pure and Simple’

An Alabama high school principal has been warned if he continues to refuse to allow a same-sex couple to attend the prom he’d be sued. Last month Alexandria High School Principal Mack Holley suspended one of the teen girls and her friend who helped her ask her girlfriend to the prom. 

“Janizia and Raven have been a couple since September, 2017,” Lambda Legal Senior Attorney and Students’ Rights Strategist Paul D. Castillo says on the group’s website. “Most of their classmates and many teachers knew about it, and there had been no issue.”

“In fact, when Janizia. made her ‘promposal’ to Raven at the school talent show, where Raven was performing, the students cheered.”

“The next day, however, the principal invoked ‘Christian values’ and disciplined Janizia, even though a marriage proposal made by a straight couple at a talent show in a previous year had resulted in no disciplinary action,” Castillo said.

Castillo says it’s “discrimination, pure and simple.”

The school is claiming the “promposal” was a “disruption,” but one student told AL.com, “I was there when it happened. It was right after her performance. No words were spoken by them. They just got happy, hugged and that was it.”

Lambda Legal sent Calhoun County School District Superintendent Joe Dyar and Alexandria High School Principal Mack Holley a letter Thursday, threatening a lawsuit, and reminding them their actions violates the Constitution.

“The Principal’s religious-based remarks and proselytizing over the school’s public address system the day after the Promposal, his subsequent discipline of J.R., and the alleged threat to punish R.G. for her expression of same-sex affection through her performance violate clearly established federal law,” a portion of the letter reads. “His actions to sanction, embarrass, and make an example out of the Students based on their sex and sexual orientation are evidence of animus toward lesbian, gay and bisexual students and violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”

Image by arda via Flickr and a CC license