Fighting Back
Gay litigant in lawsuit against Nevada school district to speak at VAC event.
DIANA LIEBERMAN
Copy Editor
IV
alk down the hallways of nearly any
high school in the United States and
you'll see teens showing blatant signs
of their sexual orientation: boys and
girls holding hands, whispering into each other's
ears, sneaking in a hurried kiss between classes.
Nobody gets suspended, beat up or sent to a spe-
cial school for that sort
of behavior.
According to Derek Henkle, now 21, all he ever did
on high school property was talk about his own sexual
orientation. But, because he is gay, he says, he suffered
extreme emotional and physical harassment — includ-
ing being beaten by schoolmates.
On Thursday, Nov. 1, Henkle comes to metro
Detroit to speak about his experiences at a program,
"Teens are Talking ... About Discrimination,
Harassment, Bullying and Solutions," presented by the
Michigan Jewish AIDS Coalition -(MJAC) and its
ECHO (Educating our Community about
Homosexuality through Outreach) program. The event
takes place at 7:30 p.m. at Birmingham's Seaholm
High School, at Lincoln and Cranbrook.
Other sponsors include the Anti-Defamation
League and the Ferndale-based Affirmations
Lesbian Gay Community Center.
Henkle, who now lives in San
Francisco and works for a variety of
nonprofit organizations, grew up in
Washoe County, Nev., near Reno.
His litany of experiences while in
middle and high school ranged
from verbal harassment to threats
and violence.
With the support of the Lambda
Legal Defense and Education
Fund, a national organization
seeking full recognition of the
civil rights of lesbians, gay men
and people with AIDS through
impact litigation, education and
public policy work, Henkle has
filed a federal lawsuit against the
Washoe County School District
and several of its employees.
Among the charges in the law-
suit, filed in U.S. District Court of
Northern Nevada, are that the school
district violated Henkle's consti-
tutional right to freedom
of speech while also
violating fed- _
eral laws that prohibit discrimination in educational
institutions that receive federal funding.
No Place To Hide
Here are a few of the incidents Henkle cites in his
lawsuit:
In 1995, two boys from his Reno-area high school
strung a lasso around his neck and threatened to
drag him from their pick-up truck. They received
only brief suspensions. Henkle is sure they were try-
ing to do serious harm — "I'm lucky they couldn't
tie a decent lasso," he says.
Transferred to another Washoe County high
school, Henkle claims he was repeatedly told by the
principal to hide his sexual orientation. At one
point, he remembers the principal saying, "I won't
have you acting like a fag."
At yet a third school in the same district, two school
police officers witnessed Henkle being punched in the
face six times by another student. The officers tried to
discourage him from reporting the incident, he says.
Henkle, who had been tracked in gifted and talent-
ed programs since elementary school, "came out" as
gay while he was in middle school. Because of the
harassment he suffered, he says, the school district
insisted he transfer into the adult education program
when he was 16. However, he soon found adult edu-
cation did not offer all the courses he needed for grad-
uation; eventually, he dropped out without a degree.
The Washoe County School District does not deny
that Henkle suffered harassment while a student.
However, says Jeff Blanck, the school district's general
counsel, of the 45 original causes of action cited by the
original lawsuit, about 15 have so far been eliminated.
"These were areas in which he sought recovery in
areas not coverable by law," Blanck says. "For instance,
he filed against individuals as violations of the 1983
Civil Rights law. That's an action you bring against an
institution, not an individual."
Another point the district intends to argue is
based on a 1999 decision by the U.S. Supreme
Court in the case Davis vs. Monroe County Board of
Education. In this case, Blanck says, the court decid-
ed that "a person with a certain degree of authority
must have had actual knowledge and shown deliber-
ate indifference" in order to be liable.
"The things we knew about, we acted upon," he says.
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
An outside attorney, not Blanck, will argue the schools'
case in court. Blanck, who came to the district after
Henkle left, did offer this opinion: "One of the prob-
lems with Mr. Henkle, as I see it, was his willingness to
talk about his sexual activities, and we don't allow that
from any student, heterosexual or homosexual: It dis-
ruptive to the academic atmosphere."
Jon Davidson is Henkle's attorney from Lambda
10/26
2001
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