A school district in Louisiana is begging to get sued:

Carroll High School senior Claudetteia Love, an openly gay student and top academic scholar, won't attend the school's prom this year because the school won't allow her to wear a tuxedo. The school says it's simply a dress code, but Love said the school's prohibition is more about her sexual orientation than her fashion choices. Friday, she sat quietly crying in her living room as she talked about missing one of the signature events of her senior year. The prom is April 24. "I told my mom, 'They're using me. They put me in all these honors and advanced placement classes so I can take all of these tests and get good grades and better the school, but when it's time for me to celebrate the fact that I've accomplished what I need to accomplish and I'm about to graduate, they don't want to let me do it, the way I want to,' " she said.

Love is one of Carroll High's star students, and Carroll High administrators haven't been shy about trotting this lesbian student out when it might benefit them:

Last year, Love was one of a group of students presented in a Monroe City School Board meeting as part of the school's high achieving medical magnet program. She will represent the school at the annual Scholars' Banquet, an event for the top students in Ouachita Parish, and has a full scholarship to Jackson State University.

Last week, Carroll High principal Patrick Taylor—his contact info here—allegedly told Love's mother that members of the faculty threatened to refuse to chaperone prom if any girls showed up in tuxes. Today, the ACLU said the school is breaking the law. And also today, Kate Kendell of the National Center for Lesbian Rights let the school know that they can and will sue:

"The school's principal (Patrick Taylor) needs to put on his big boy pants, man up and make a decision now, before he gets a call from us," executive director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights Kate Kendell said. "Once he changes course and says she and other girls can wear tuxes to the prom, he may hear from 20 people who say he caved in to pressure, but if he doesn't it will be in the thousands, because people know what the right thing is."

Quickly: As I've said before, the days when administrators at public schools could abuse LGBT students with impunity and without fear of blowback are over. With that said... and while I'm no media strategist... and I've certainly said things I regretted (and promptly apologized for)... it seems to me that...

...a white lesbian who heads a national LGBT org should maybeprobablydefinitely err on the side of not telling an adult African American man—even one so clearly in the wrong—to pull up his "big boy pants" and "man up." The odds of the religious right attempting to twist this into a controversy about a white lesbian calling a black man "boy" are now somewhere north of 90 percent. That's not what Kendall did, of course, but that will hardly matter to the professional bearers of false witness on the religious right.

UPDATE: Kate Kendell—who is, by the way, all sorts of awesome—said in an email...

Thank you so much for covering this story, Dan. I do regret my remark. It was a comment made at the end of a lengthy interview not still thinking i was 'on the record.' Rookie stupidity—after 20+ years you'd think I'd get this. Once I saw the comment in print I was chagrined—and I did not even know at that point that the Principal was African American. Lesson learned... again.