This situation is so incredibly frustrating.

"Willfully obtuse" - well put. He may be a federal judge, but he's still got to live in that community also. I suppose this is about the best anyone could hope for.

Seems like Dan is just being a bitch now.

He says Constance is not invited to the private prom, but the court opinion says that, based on testimony in court, all students are welcome to that prom.

Dan's assertion that Constance is not invited seems to be based on one student's claim on an internet bulletin board that she's not welcome, and on Constance's lawyer's assertion that just because an individual invitation had not yet been received, then she must not be welcome (See "Meanwhile inMississippi"). I don't buy it.

Dan, you don't have it quite right about how the court viewed the "private prom." The court wrote (p. 11):

However, the Court is of the opinion that its failure to grant an injunction in this instance does not disserve the public interest. Defendants testified that a parent sponsored prom which is open to all IAHS students has been planned and is scheduled for April 2, 2010. Though the details of the "private" prom are unknown to the Court, Defendants have made representations, upon which this Court relies, that all IAHS students, including the Plaintiff, are welcome and encouraged to attend. The Court finds that requiring Defendants to step-back into a sponsorship role at this late date would only confuse and confound the community on the issue. Parents have taken the initiative to plan and pay for a "private" prom for the Juniors and Seniors of IAHS and to now require Defendants to host one as it had originally planned would defeat the purpose and efforts of those individuals.

In other words, the court said that the *only* reason it was denying the injunction was because the defendants represented to the court that Constance (and her girlfriend) will be welcome and encouraged to attend the private prom.

Also, the court said Constance could amend her complaint to request compensatory damages. Since the court has already found a first amendment violation, the district is now on notice that it may be on the hook for any pain or distress Constance will suffer if the district's "representations" about the private prom turn out to be incorrect.

From the court document: "a parent sponsored prom which is open to all IAHS students has been planned and is scheduled". The judge isn't forcing the school to host prom because the defendants testified that Constance can attend this alterna-prom. If that doesn't happen, the principal and superintendent can be held responsible in court.

The ACLU site has the full Preliminary Injunction Opinion available (for download PDF viewing) on their website: http://www.aclu.org/lgbt-rights/fulton-m…

So, the school violated her rights. Are they going to be punished in some way? Because otherwise it was sort of pointless to go to trial, right?

Constance and the ACLU only found out about the private prom when it was referenced in the school in its filing with the court.

According to Constance and her lawyers, she is not welcome at the private prom. I have calls in to Constance and the ACLU. If that's changed, I'll post after I hear from 'em.

@8, all this is just pre-trial legal stuff ("Preliminary Injunction"). Damages will be determined during actual trial, date TBD.

Accidental gay activist and hero Constance McMillen's school officials canceled her prom when she politely requested to sport a tuxedo and take her girlfriend as her date to the Godforsaken high school rite of passage. Now, her classmates and their parents in her Mississippi town have left her off of the invite to a substitute prom that will be held at a furniture mart in nearby Tupelo, according to the Clarion Ledger.

As the prom being held at the "furniture mart" is a private event --albeit a tacky one -- excluding McMillen is not a constitutional issue, according Benjamin Griffith, the school board attorney.

http://www.shewired.com/Article.cfm?ID=2…

Hopefully the principal and superintendent wouldn't be stupid enough to perjure themselves over this issue. I'm going to hope that the judge required a commitment from them before making this decision.

I doubt Constance is going to pursue legal damages. She got ostracized for being the one to "cancel" prom. Do you really think she or her family are going to want to become the family that "bankrupted" the county?

It may be no consolation to Constance, but at least she has made it harder for others to be discriminated against.

If the parents putting on the private prom don't send Constance an invitation, or turn her away, then they put the school district at risk for a larger damages award and, although it is unlikely, the district and its attorney could conceivably face judicially-imposed sanctions if shown to have misrepresented facts to the Court.

@3 Come on now. If the parents organizing this prom were on Constance's side, then why didn't they organize to pressure the school board to welcome her instead of helping them get off the hook by organizing the alternaprom?? The prom is a week from Friday. When do you think they were planning on getting around to inviting her?? This case is national news!! If they wanted to invite her, they already would have.

If she is never invited and the alternaprom happens without her, will you come back and apologize for calling Dan a bitch?

I wouldn't be surprised that if the judge had ordered the school to hold the prom as planned, the parents would keep their private prom and Constance, her date, would be the only ones at the school-sponsored prom. So maybe this is the best for her and the school. But if they don't let her go, she should sue their pants off for all kinds of $$

re 8: I don't think it was pointless, regardless of what happens to Constance now, because it sets a precedent that should prevent other schools from pulling stunts like this.

I agree with 17, the judge could force the school to un-cancel prom, but he couldn't force the families throwing the private prom to cancel that one, and then you essentially have segregated prom. As iffy as this seems, holding them to a promise of an open and inclusive private prom seems like the only way to potentially accomplish what Constance wanted; a prom for everyone, herself included.

If the private hosts don't publicly announce that the prom is open to all students and don't issue Constance an invitiation, she should show up (with supporters and the press) in her tux and present this court decision as her invitation.

According to the "Let Constance Take Her Girlfriend to Prom!" Facebook Page: Breaking: Court finds school violated Constance’s rights. School allowed to cancel prom, but Constance should be allowed to attend the private prom. More soon!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Let-Consta…

We'll see if Constance is actually able to go to the private prom, or if the whole "Constance can come to the private prom!" never actually materializes.

@13

Boy, amazon, if you can show me where they've made *one* single smart move on this whole thing, I'd love to see it. I can 100% believe that they've done an incredibly stupid thing by perjuring themselves.

@3 Thanks for the concern trolling. We have a few extra sources, courtesy of DS. Not that we needed them, of course, but it helps.

@21- OMG! You're totally right! About everything! Well, except Itawamba is in Mississippi, not Missouri...

@21, did you mean Mississippi? Or is your head in your ass?

To follow up on my previous post, the school district should be very scared of the judge's careful and clever ruling. He couldn't force all the students to now attend a school-sponsored prom when there is a private alternative, and he couldn't actually force the parents to allow Constance to go to the private prom. What he has done is make the School District the guarantor of Constance's attendance at the private prom, and if it doesn't get the parents to extend an invitation, he has placed the District in the difficult position of appearing to have wilfully misled the Court and appearing to have orchestrated a further denial of Constance's rights, increasing her damages and the school district's exposure.

The School District has a choice. It can convince the parents to let Constance go and have a decent prom experience, and the suit against it will either go away or her damages will be limited; or it can do nothing, putting itself in a precarious position and subjecting itself to expensive litigation and a real risk of a serious damage award.

Nice bit of legal work, I say.

Regarding the GA school un-cancelling & whether her stand had anything to do with it:

"Maybe the school realized from my case that they couldn't do that, that it was unconstitutional. I would be very pleased if what I'm doing influenced that boy's school to do the right thing."

She is SO GODDAMN COOL!

While I'm proud of her perseverance (I do know what it takes to do that), I nevertheless get the nagging feeling that sometime during the past week or so, Constance became a political pawn between the Dans and the homo-haters of the U.S., and she's being played so long as she carries a face value.

I'm starting to feel bad for her on a wholly new level.

YOWZA!

Glad someone had sense down there.

@29 The internet source that Dan cited had it's own source for the information, the Clarion Ledger. Which is a newspaper. It's there if you want to read it.

@30

I hope that you are not saying that because school districts don't have unlimited funds, they should be allowed to engage in unlawful, discriminatory actions. The idea that people/organizations who can't pay legal fees should get away with breaking the law is ridiculous.

@ Dan - How did you get a copy of the opinion? I went to the website for the Northern District of Mississippi ( http://www.msnd.uscourts.gov/ )and the "Opinion" section appears to be limited to official court business.

Also, an interesting side note, the presiding judge was appointed by Reagan - somewhat surprising given that in my reading of the opinion the judge, Senior Judge Davidson, seemed very sympathetic to Constance.

Finally, maybe a little thanks to the ACLU is in order. For them to respond as quickly and as well as they did deserves some applause.

@30, only if the administrators keep their heads in their asses. They can still do the right thing and host prom. They can still implement policies, dress codes, and rules that do not violate civil rights.

My point: People with their head in their ass might not be able to read, write, or proofread.

@33, it's on the ACLU site, Dan linked it in an update to the post, here: http://www.aclu.org/lgbt-rights/fulton-m…

"The Court finds that requiring Defendants to step-back into a sponsorship role at this late date would only confuse and confound the community on the issue."

...because the community is comprised of idiots.

@25,

Way to break it down. This is an awesome ruling, and the judge could not have done better by Constance.

In Google News, the headlines make it look like she had a big loss.

Here's the top 4 items:
CNN: Judge rules against lesbian high-schooler in Mississippi prom case
AP: Judge won't force Miss. district to hold prom
Jackson Clarion Ledger: Judge won't force Mississippi school to hold prom
Also AP: Judge rules against lesbian teen in prom flap

Call me crazy, but isn't violating Constitutional rights a little closer to the point?

@33 -- Dan has posted a link to the opinion. But if you want to look at the entire docket, including briefs and exhibits from the hearing yesterday, you can go to the N.D. Miss. web page (http://www.msnd.uscourts.gov/), create a pacer account, and query case number 10-61. The charge is 8 cents per page, but opinions are free. Apparently there is some other free service called "recap" that has some court documents, but I'm not familiar with how it works.

I've got what may be a stoopit question. Is Constance's girlfriend a student at the school? The private party throwers are saying that all students of the school are welcome. Does that imply that non-students are not welcome? Can you bring a date that is not a student?

This is a victory, even if the school was not forced to hold the prom (Constance had better get that invitation, or the ACLU will no doubt drag the bigots through the mud and into the spotlight once more). The school and the greater community has had its reputation absolutely trashed, and now all the bigots have been fully apprised that they will bring a shit-storm down on themselves if they do anything like this again (smart move Bleckley County HS). Constance has added yet another legal precedence to the books that shows this kind of horse-shit is unconstitutional, a flagrant violation of first amendment rights.

Constance had better get that invite. It's a shame that the school board doesn't seem to be getting any legal punishment, but at least they have been utterly shamed in front of the nation, and perhaps now bigots working in the school system will think twice before letting their personal beliefs get in the way of their duties.

@41, Yes, they're both students at the school.

@43 - then what's their problem?

i sorta get the impression that constance doesn't really want this business to drag on any longer than it already has. it seems doubtful that she'll go for a big civil suit. i think the judge made the best call he could: he trashed the unjust actions of the school board with out forcing "the community" to reinstate the canceled prom, which would take this whole thing to a more sleazy talk show/day time courtroom tv kinda vibe rather than a dignified moral victory for a totally cool kid.

@43 @44
From what I remember her girlfriend is a student from another school / another district. I assume the private prom won't use "outside student" as an excuse to not allow Constance and her date to go as that would also prevent other couples with outside dates

If she's smart she'll ask the people involved to undergo sensitivity training and establish a new school policy regarding prom attire and same-sex dates. The board will get off relatively easy, but she will have made her point; she won't look bad for taking them to the cleaners; and other schools will think twice about trying the same thing.

46: she's a student in the same school; it says so in the court decision.

@48, A Period Hive drone! BZZZzzzzZzzzZZZzzzZzzzfuckzzZZZoffzzzZzZ

Someone claiming to be the GF's sister says they broke up from all the pressure and sounds like her parents are not thrilled with having a gay daughter.

I know a hundred women who would go to prom with Constance. If it's true and no one else is on her invite list, it's time to call in the Shimizu, the Sykes, the Ray and Sailiers, and possibly the Gaga.

Kudos for the judge for recognizing the violation of her constitutional rights. Boo to those who think constitutional rights are pesky pains in the ass.

@45: I agree. The injustice has been remedied; the bigots have been exposed for what they were and relented to the forces of good and light. Maybe, hopefully, they realized that what they did was undeservingly hurtful to someone else, and next time maybe they'll try to work out their concerns differently.

I don't think any more is needed here, except maybe to remind people of what we learned today. But as long as Constance feels welcomed, can be proud of who she is, and is happy, then I'm happy.

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

She's quite articulate and seems (to me!) like a really nice person, from these interview responses. Which is great for all concerned. I wish her the best.

Well, I hope that she survives through the rest of High School.

I did donate to the ACLU for helping Constance who in turn help another boy in Georgia. How many other kids is this one very public fight going to affect? Sometimes, making noise is the best thing a person can do. And winning helps too.

Again, I'll state, I notice the desperation in the tone of comments made by the Period troll.

I've said it before, and this goes to show, he knows he's on the losing side of this battle, and is grasping for whatever bullshit he can to justify his lame reasoning.

Soon, he will be a "legion" of one (or two, if you include Loveschild). Maybe they can meet for a drink and cry on each others shoulder.

@56, Except the Period Hive and LC would be at each other's throats over topics like healthcare.