A mix of news from the courtroom, screen, and stage:
School Speech on Gay Issues: A federal judge has issued his written opinion in a case I blogged about in which the judge in May ordered a Florida school district to cease prohibiting students from displaying pro-gay messages.
The written ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard Smoak of Panama City, Fla., is here. The judge said the principal of Ponce De Leon High School was entitled to his opinion that homosexuality is wrong, but where the principal “went wrong was when he endeavored to silence the opinions of his dissenters.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, which defended a student who wanted to wear messages such as “I support my gay friends,” has this press release on the judge’s ruling.
Brown v. Board of Education in the Arts: It’s not often that the School Law Blog gets to link to Variety, but the Hollywood trade magazine has this story about the planning stages for a film to be called “The Crusaders.” It’s about the lawyers at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund who pressed the Brown case. It is based on Crusaders in the Courts, a memoir by Jack Greenberg, who as a young law school graduate worked with the LDF on the desegregation cases. Tobey Maguire is to play Greenberg in the film, according to Variety.
This news comes as the actor Laurence Fishburne continues playing Thurgood Marshall, the late Supreme Court justice and the architect of the Brown v. Board of Education and its companion cases, in the Broadway play “Thurgood.” The show, which received mixed reviews, has been extended until Aug. 17 at the Booth Theater.
Many of you may remember “Separate But Equal,” the 1991 ABC television miniseries that told the story of Brown, with Sidney Poitier as Thurgood Marshall and Burt Lancaster as John W. Davis, the lead advocate for the states seeking to maintain legally segregated schools.
Aid to Christian Colleges in Colorado: I was too wrapped up in deadlines the other day to give this decision the attention it deserved. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, ruled in Colorado Christian University v. Weaver that Colorado could not deny scholarship aid to otherwise qualified students who attended a college that the state deemed “pervasively sectarian.”
The Denver Post reported on the ruling here.