Henkle v. Gregory, 150 F. Supp. 2d 1067 (D. Nev. 2001), was a federal lawsuit that ended in a 2002 agreement in which the Washoe County School District (Nevada) agreed to implement policies to support openly gay and lesbian students and to pay the plaintiff, a student who had complained of harassment and inaction on the part of school officials, $451,000 in damages. The plaintiff's attorneys called it "the largest pre-trial award of its kind in history".
Background
Derek R. Henkle was born in 1983 in Denver, Colorado.
While a student at Galena High School, Henkle began attending a gay and lesbian support group at the University of Nevada, Reno. During the course of a meeting in the fall of 1995 that was filmed by a local cable program, Set Free, he discussed his homosexuality. Fellow high school students learned of his admission, repeatedly called him names, and once lassoed him and threatened to drag him with their pickup truck. His report of the incident to the assistant principal was met with laughter. After further harassment, Henkle asked to be transferred to Wooster High School. His request was granted, but at both schools he was told he was being allowed to transfer on condition that he "keep his sexuality to himself". The principal at Wooster told him to "stop acting like a fag". Harassment continued there and then at a third, Washoe High School, where police officers failed to respond when Henkle was repeatedly punched in the face. The school district enrolled him in a continuing education program at a local community college, though he was too young to qualify to take the high school equivalency examination.
At one point during his high school years, he read an article in OUT magazine about Jamie Nabozny, a Wisconsin high school student who successfully sued his school district for failing to protect him from verbal and physical abuse. As he contemplated a lawsuit of his own, he discussed the process with James Dale, the Eagle Scout who fought his exclusion from a leadership position with the Boy Scouts on account of his homosexuality.
Lawsuit
Title IX, part of a federal civil rights statute enacted as part of the Education Amendments of 1972, prohibits sex discrimination. In 1997, the Office of Civil Rights released updated guidelines for Title IX that included for the first time the need to protect gay and lesbian students from harassment and sexually hostile environments. In 1999, the Supreme Court decision in David v. Monroe County Board of Education established that school officials could be held liable for failing to protect students from harassment by their peers. In September 2000, Lambda Legal, after a preliminary victory in a U.S. District Court, reached a settlement with a California school district that won a student-organized gay-straight alliance (GSA) the right to meet at school. The plaintiff in a harassment suit would have to prove that school officials were aware of the harassment and responded unreasonably or with deliberate indifference, and that the nature and extent of the harassment deprived the student of an education.
Henkle, represented by Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund (now Lambda Legal) and O'Melveny & Myers, filed suit in U.S. District Court in January 2000 against Washoe County School District. The complaint named three high school principals, a vice principal, a student services director, a teacher, and two county police officers. He sought compensatory and punitive damages as well as an order directing the school district to award him a high school diploma.
The district moved to dismiss the case, Derek Henkle v. Ross Gregory et al. On March 1, 2001 Magistrate Judge Robert A. McQuaid, Jr., dismissed some but not all of Henkle's claims and allowed Henkle to seek punitive damages. The case was scheduled to go to trial in November 2002.
Agreement
The parties to the case settled on August 28, 2002, with the district agreeing to make a number of policy changes and to pay $451,000 in damages. Henkle's attorneys described the settlement as "the first in the country to recognize the constitutional right of gay and lesbian youth to be open about their sexual orientation in schools and to be protected from discrimination and harassment by other students." School officials said the policies were designed to prevent the development of "an intimidating, hostile or offensive school environment."