By JEFF STITT
Attorneys representing McKeesport Area School District and its superintendent filed a motion in federal court Wednesday seeking dismissal of a lawsuit filed against the district last week by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Eleven students from McKeesport Area High School filed the federal civil rights lawsuit April 10. They allege the district has “consistently” been denying the students permission to form a club called the “McKeesport Black Student Union” and contend the school’s “failure” to approve the club is a violation of the First Amendment and the federal Equal Access Act, which requires public schools to grant students the ability to form non-curricular clubs outside of instruction time without administrative interference or discrimination based on the message or purpose of the club.
In a press release last week, ACLU of Pennsylvania Legal Director Vic Walczak alleged that the students “proposed the establishment of the MBSU, but school administrators consistently diverted the students by requiring new conditions and eventually by refusing to approve the club.”
The ACLU stated that students RaSona Webb, Grace Walker, Andre Robinson and Stephanie Williams-Murray, who call themselves the MBSU founding committee, drafted a charter, emailed it to Superintendent Dr. Mark Holtzman Jr. in February and asked him to present it to the board.
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