Principal’s Call To Parent About Lesbian Student Violated Her Privacy

A student who is openly gay at her high school has a right to privacy to keep that information from being given to her parents by the school’s principal, a federal court has found.

The U.S. District Court in California rejected a motion to dismiss the privacy complaint brought by the student and her mother against the principal and the Garden Grove Unified School District. The defendants argued that the plaintiffs’ “conduct is not private and a reasonable person could not expert that their actions on school grounds, in front of everyone else on the school grounds, would remain private.”

Instead, the court found that the student had alleged a claim for privacy because an event that is not wholly private does not mean that an individual has no interest in limiting its disclosure. Thus, plaintiff “has alleged a serious invasion of her privacy interest by Wolf when he disclosed her sexual orientation to her mother.”

The 17-year-old plaintiff attends Santiago High School. She alleged that in the past year the principal Ben Wolf punished her because she is openly gay on campus. Wolf’s actions allegedly included “suspending [C.N.] for hugging and affectionately kissing her girlfriend while ignoring similar behavior by heterosexual students and bluntly revealing [C.N.’s] sexual orientation to her parents without [C.N.’] permission or prior knowledge.”

The suit also alleges that the school district does not have a written policy forbidding or specifying inappropriate public display s of affection.

In addition to the privacy claim, the lawsuit alleges violations of the equal protection clause and the freedom of expression clause of the constitution. The court granted dismissal of the case against the school district under the theory of governmental immunity but allowed the case to continue against the individual defendants.

C.N. et al. v. Wolf, et al, U.S. Dist. Ct. Central Dist. Ca., minute order dated Nov. 28, 2005.