Lambda Legal Urges Ithaca City School District to Retract Its Stance on New York Human Rights Law

'The human rights law is the only effective law that expressly addresses antigay discrimination in New York schools. Attacking it jeopardizes LGBT students.'

(New York, October 18, 2007) — In an effort to persuade the Ithaca City School District to abandon its stance that the New York Human Rights Law does not apply to public schools, Lambda Legal today sent school board members a letter critiquing the board's argument and explaining the potential harm the board's position could cause.

"The human rights law is the only effective law that expressly addresses antigay discrimination in New York Schools," said Hayley Gorenberg, Deputy Legal Director at Lambda Legal. Attacking it jeopardizes LGBT students."

In response to charges of racial discrimination, the Ithaca City School District defended itself by challenging the New York Human Rights Law, stating that the law should be interpreted to exclude public school students from its protections.

In the case that raised the issue, a young African-American girl alleged relentless harassment by a group of white students while riding the public school bus to DeWitt Middle School. Her mother, Amelia Kearney, said she reported the incidents but was given little to no help. She claims that the district failed to protect her daughter from racial harassment. In defense against this claim, the Ithaca City School District not only contested the specific facts, but argued that the human rights law does not apply to public schools. When a state Supreme Court judge ruled on September 11, 2007, that the law applied to schools, the school district launched an appeal contesting that holding. Its decision to challenge the NYHRL has garnered harsh criticism from community members and civil rights organizations.

At its October 23 meeting the Board of Education will discuss a proposal to discontinue its challenge to the applicability of the NYHRL.

The above is a press release from Lambda Legal. For more information click on title of this post above which will take you to the press release and the actual letter (pdf file) Lambda Legal sent to the ICSD School Board. Also, there is an article in today's Ithaca Journal.
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The connections being made here between the rights of LGBT students and students of color to seek remedies for discriminatory and unlawful actions underline the importance of how civil rights for TLGB people against homophobia and the struggles by people of color against racism are inseparable. For those of us who are TLGB people of color, race and sexual orientation have been inseparable in struggles for civil rights because we are never just gay or just ethnic. Race, sexual orientation, gender, class, ability, all of these are inseparable one from the other. To consider any of these social categories "one at a time" or in isolation from each other results in a very incomplete analysis of any particular situation. Because homophobia, sexism, classism, and racism are systemic, any system that enables and supports one most likely supports the other forms of oppression. This is why speaking out and taking action against only one, i.e. homophobia, will always be incomplete action. What is happening at the Ithaca High School and the impact this is having on the larger community is a microcosm of society. It is a local eruption of national issues. If this is what is going on in Ithaca, arguably the most liberal city in central New York, what can we expect more broadly in our more conservative region?