Two students are suing their Minnesota school district over a recently adopted policy banning Pride flags, rainbow stickers, and other symbols of support for the LGBTQ+ community.
The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota last week on behalf of the students and their parents, claims the Detroit Lakes Public School District and four members of the district’s school board violated the students’ rights to free speech and equal protection under the state constitution and that the policy violates the Minnesota Human Rights Act’s prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
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According to the ACLU, for more than two years, teachers at the district’s high school have displayed rainbow flag stickers in the classrooms to signal that they are a safe and supportive space for LGBTQ+ students, as well as for students with LGBTQ+ parents. But a controversial policy adopted at the Detroit Lakes School Board’s July 27 meeting ended that practice.
The policy, introduced by Sanford Nelson, one of the four board members named as a defendant in the suit, ordered “the immediate removal of all non-school materials not funded, sponsored, or authorized by the school district.” It goes on to note that the ban applies “but is not limited to any rainbow stickers, posters, flags, buttons, etc. displayed in Detroit Lakes Public Schools facilities.” As the complaint notes, only materials associated with the LGBTQ+ community are explicitly mentioned in the policy.
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According to the lawsuit, the “safe space” stickers were a “core concern” behind the ban, even though the district’s high school principal allegedly confirmed she had “never heard a concern from a student, parent, or teacher about the presence of the stickers” prior to the vote.
Nonetheless, the board voted 4–2 to adopt the ban, which Board Chair John Steffl later said in a September 2 interview with The Minnesota Star Tribune would also apply to patches on students’ backpacks. Steffl also seemed to suggest that the policy might be selectively enforced. When asked about Christian symbols and messaging, he told the paper that “I’m a Christian so that doesn’t bother me.”
The ACLU argues that Steffl’s statement and those of other board members who voted for the ban, as well as text messages in which they exchanged links to anti-LGBTQ+ websites and YouTube videos, indicate that the policy was “not based on neutrality, but rather the personal viewpoints of a simple majority of the Board.”
“Certain Board members used the term “neutrality” as a shield, but their actions and internal communications demonstrated clear animus based on sexual orientation and gender identity,” the complaint claims.
The ACLU also argues that the way the policy was introduced violated not only the board’s own policies, but also Minnesota state law. According to the complaint, the policy was not listed on the agenda for the July 27 meeting. Instead, Nelson moved to add it to the agenda at the meeting, violating the board’s policy requiring 24 hours’ notice to add an item to the agenda.
Nelson also allegedly said the policy resulted from “private discussions” among board members. However, board members Julie Smith-Yliniemi and Mary Rotter, who voted against the policy and are not named as defendants in the lawsuit, were allegedly excluded from those discussions, which were also not open to the public, violating Minnesota’s Open Meetings Law.
“Because the LGBTQ+ Pride Ban was introduced orally and not put on the agenda ahead of the meeting, members of the public, including parents of affected students, were unaware that it would be discussed,” states the ACLU’s complaint. Members of the public and school district employees, it adds, “were not afforded an opportunity to opine on the action item” ahead of the board’s July 27 vote.
That changed at the board’s August 24 meeting, which nearly 100 people attended, when more than a dozen people signed up to urge the board to reverse its ban, Valley News Live reported.
“These kids need to know that there are people in their community who won’t shame them, that won’t try to beat that out of them, or try to medicate it out of them, or try to pray their gay away,” speaker Emily Buermann told the board.
“A rainbow sticker on a classroom door may save a child’s life who’s absolutely struggling for a myriad of different reasons,” added Lindsey Miller.
According to the lawsuit, at that same August meeting, the board voted on a resolution to postpone the ban drafted by its lawyers in the wake of public outcry. The resolution failed, and the ban took effect when school resumed on September 1.
Nevertheless, Detroit Lakes Superintendent Mark Jenson told MPR News in a statement last week that the administration has not “directed the removal of any materials from schools” as the board continues to discuss the policy.
But according to the ACLU’s lawsuit, plaintiff L.S., a Detroit Lakes High School student, says classmates have already torn down rainbow stickers outside classrooms and harassed L.S. about rainbow attire they wore to school, citing the ban.
“There’s a chilling effect, because students are aware that this is happening, and it is causing students not to speak up when they want to support LGBTQ+ students,” Catherine Ahlin-Halverson, deputy legal director of the ACLU of Minnesota, told MPR News. Students, she said, “have the right not to experience bias and discrimination, and that is what a ban like this causes for them.”
Meanwhile, the school board is set to consider a revised version of the policy, which Nelson has said “will meet the legal muster,” at its meeting on Monday.
But Ahlin-Halverson told MPR that cleaning up the policy’s language won’t fix anything.
“The regulation of speech because you don’t agree with it is unconstitutional,” she said. “Whether these school board members, who have been crystal clear about their anti-LGBTQ+ bias in passing the rainbow ban, now pursue a more neutral-sounding policy to get rid of the same rainbows they banned in the rainbow ban, doesn’t impact the unconstitutional nature of the policy.”
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