Equal Access of Law at Center of Utah Flap

By Jeff Archer

The Salt Lake City school board's recent decision to ban all extracurricular clubs rather than allow a support group for gay students confirmed the suspicions of many educators and legal experts that schools haven't had their last day in court over the Equal Access Act.

The 1984 federal law bars districts from singling out groups such as religious clubs for exclusion from high school campuses. And it opened the door, many administrators feared, to far more controversial groups such as white supremacists or occult groups.

Though few such controversies have surfaced since a U.S. Supreme Court test of the law in 1990, officials in many...