By Phil Ray (pray@altoonamirror.com)
The Altoona Mirror

JOHNSTOWN – The suicide of a Blair County Prison inmate was “predictable” and “preventable,” an attorney for the man’s family told a federal jury Tuesday

Jeremy Corbin, 32, of Bellwood suffered from severe depression and other mental health issues when he was admitted to prison on the morning of Oct. 18, 2006, and tests administered by a corrections officer showed that Corbin was a suicide risk, attorney Andrew J. Shubin of State College said.

Corbin was placed in a special cell for inmates at risk but was released later that day into the general jail population by the prison’s forensic specialist, Jennifer Feathers, who determined he wasn’t at a risk.

Two days later, Corbin ended his life by using a bed sheet in his cell to hang himself.

During an emotional opening statement, Shubin said that had Corbin been allowed to stay in the suicide prevention cell in the prison, which had no bed sheets, he may be alive today.

The jury was shown a picture of Corbin and his family in better times, just two years before his suicide, when the family moved into a new home in Bellwood.

Pictures of the cells in which Corbin was housed in the Blair County Prison were displayed.

With Corbin’s widow, Kayci Lynn Tatsch-Corbin, in tears, Shubin asked that the couple’s four children come into the courtroom.

He introduced each child to the jury, and concluded his opening statement by saying, “These are the survivors left behind. These are my clients. These are who I am fighting for.”

Shubin is asking damages from Feathers, contending she was not qualified to assess Corbin’s suicide risk. The lawsuit also seeks damages from Blair County and PrimeCare Medical Inc. of Harrisburg, which provides medical and mental health care to the county’s inmates.

Feathers’ attorney Louis C. Schmitt Jr., was equally as passionate in his opening statement to the jury.

“I’ll fight for her. I’ll fight for her in this courtroom,” he said.

Feathers did not find that Corbin was a high risk for suicide, Schmitt said. He also emphasized that others involved with Corbin, including a psychiatrist with Nulton Diagnostic of Altoona, who had evaluated Corbin for mental health issues, and a nurse at the prison, who talked to Corbin during his stay, also found he was not a suicide risk.

Schmitt argued that Corbin told Feathers he had threatened suicide after his arrest because he wanted to get his wife’s attention.

Corbin had been committed to the jail after he called his wife on the telephone in violation of a protection-from-abuse order.

Feathers was developing a plan to help Corbin, and her actions in his case did not constitute “deliberate indifference,” Schmitt said, a reference to the legal standard Shubin must meet for the jury to find against her.

County attorney Edmond R. Joyal Jr. of Pittsburgh defended the corrections officers who recognized the risk Corbin presented and took steps to address the risk by placing him in a suicide prevention cell.

“They did the job. They didn’t turn their backs. They didn’t write it off,” Joyal said.

While Feathers worked at the prison evaluating the mental health status of inmates, she was actually employed by Altoona Regional Health System, Altoona Hospital Campus, and was part of PrimeCare’s medical and mental health program at the prison.

PrimeCare attorney John Ninosky that there was no “deliberate indifference” involved in Corbin’s care.

Despite the best efforts of the corrections officers, Feathers and the medical staff, Corbin’s death was a “tragedy that couldn’t be avoided,” he said.

The jury of nine women and three men began hearing testimony late Tuesday afternoon when corrections officer Stephen Dell, the officer who administered the suicide risk test to Corbin, took the stand.

Dell had received information from the office of Magisterial District Judge Fred B. Miller and one of his fellow officers, Scott Wallack, that Corbin was threatening suicide.

During the suicide screening test he administered during the early morning of Oct. 18, Corbin was asked if he was thinking about killing himself.

Corbin said he was, Dell testified.

Dell, now a corrections officer at the State Correctional Institution at Smithfield, asked Corbin, “Are you sure?”

Corbin replied in a flat, unemotional voice, “Yes,” Dell said.

Dell said he was “shocked” at the suicide, and that when he mentioned it to Feathers a few weeks later during a suicide prevention class, she told him Corbin “knew how to play the system.”

Testimony continues this morning in U.S. District Judge Kim Gibson’s courtroom.

WASHINGTON — Driving across the flatlands of Illinois with Barack Obama during the Senate race of 2004, Kevin Thompson sometimes found himself tutoring the candidate on gay rights.

Mr. Thompson, then a traveling aide, recalls long conversations about topics like the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion that sparked the gay rights movement, gay adoption — Mr. Obama once volunteered that Mr. Thompson and his partner would make “great parents,” Mr. Thompson recalled — and same-sex marriage, which Mr. Obama has in the past opposed.

Mr. Thompson, an Obama supporter, is skeptical about that. “To this day,” he said, “I don’t think Barack Obama has any issue with two people of the same gender getting married.”

Now President Obama says his views on same-sex marriage are “evolving,” and as he runs for re-election he is seeking support from gay donors who want to know where he stands.

This week, he will headline a $1,250-a-plate “Gala with the Gay Community” in Manhattan, his first such event as president; on June 29, he will host a Gay Pride reception at the White House. He is doing so at time when the New York Legislature is considering whether to make same-sex marriage legal — a vote that the president will no doubt be asked about while in New York.

The White House would not comment on whether Mr. Obama was ready to endorse same-sex marriage. But one Democratic strategist close to the White House, speaking only on the condition of anonymity, said some senior advisers “are looking at the tactics of how this might be done if the president chose to do it.”

And Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who is gay, said in an interview that a top adviser to Mr. Obama, whom he would not name, asked him this year, “What would be the effect if he came out for same-sex marriage?”

“My own view is that I look at President Obama’s record, he was probably inclined to think that same-sex marriage was legitimate, but as a candidate for president in 2008 that would have been an unwise thing to say,” Mr. Frank said. “And I don’t mean that he’s being hypocritical. I mean that if you live in a democratic society, it is a mix of what you think the voters want and what you think is doable.”

Many gay leaders say because the president has a strong record on issues they care about — prodding Congress to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which barred openly gay men and lesbians from serving in the military, and withdrawing legal support for the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman — he is not under intense pressure to announce a change in his position before the 2012 election.

But with the political climate around gay rights changing drastically — a handful of recent polls show that Americans, by a slim majority, now support same-sex marriage — some strategists see little political cost to a shift in position. And a review of Mr. Obama’s record, dating to when he first ran for public office, suggests that he may have been for same-sex marriage before he was against it.

In 1996, as a candidate for the State Senate in Illinois, Mr. Obama responded to a questionnaire from a gay newspaper. “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages,” Mr. Obama wrote, “and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.”

White House officials have said Mr. Obama was really referring to civil unions, which he does support. (On Friday, Mr. Obama’s communications director, Dan Pfieffer, caused a brief kerfuffle by telling a conference of bloggers that Mr. Obama had not filled out the forms himself; the White House later said he was mistaken.)

By the time Mr. Obama ran for the United States Senate in 2004, his position had become more nuanced.

Jackie Kaplan, a Chicago Democrat who was co-chairwoman of a committee of gays and lesbians supporting Mr. Obama, said he raised practical objections and made the case this way: “Why spend a lot of time on an issue that is not going to happen? The Defense of Marriage law is on the books, we’re not going to overturn that, let’s talk about how we can build more equality.”

Tracy Baim, a gay journalist in Chicago who interviewed Mr. Obama in 2004, remembers the candidate asking her to turn off her tape recorder so they could have a candid conversation on same-sex marriage. She said his objections were based on what he saw as realistic considerations: “I know what you want, I know what you can get.”

But when his Senate campaign moved into the general election against Alan Keyes, Mr. Obama told an interviewer for a black-owned radio station that religion was a factor.

Ms. Kaplan said she felt that Mr. Obama was either “pandering to Alan Keyes” or setting himself up to run for higher office; Ms. Baim, who said Mr. Obama had not cited his religious beliefs to her, viewed it as “a political maneuver.”

The black church has historically taken a dim view of same-sex marriage; the church Mr. Obama attended in Chicago, Trinity United Church of Christ, takes no official stance. Yet Trinity’s parent church is progressive; in 2005, its general synod passed a resolution supporting marriage equality for gay couples.

Once in the Senate, Mr. Obama maintained the position that his opposition was based on his religious views. Jimmy Creech, a former Methodist minister who advocates for same-sex marriage, recalls meeting with Mr. Obama’s top Senate aides in 2005. He thought Mr. Obama, the son of an interracial couple whose marriage would have been illegal in some states, would be sympathetic.

But he said the conversation turned frosty when same-sex marriage came up. “We talked about this as an expression of bigotry, using religion to justify discrimination,” Mr. Creech said. “They did not like that; the word ‘bigotry’ was inflammatory to them.”

As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama’s position hardened. In 2008, he visited the Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., where the pastor Rick Warren asked him to define marriage. “I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman,” Mr. Obama said. “For me, as a Christian, it is also a sacred union.”

Three years later, Mr. Obama has said his views are evolving, in part because he has “very close friends who are married gay and lesbian couples.”

But the Democrat who had strategy discussions with the White House on same-sex marriage said Mr. Obama seemed to be considering his place in history and was moved by the argument of Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who cast the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” as a moral issue.

“This is clearly a president who is interested in making big historical changes,” the strategist said. “I think this issue has moved into that context for him.”

U.S. District Judge Mary A. McLaughlin on Tuesday refused to lift a preliminary injunction that prevents school officials from enforcing a ban on the popular rubber bracelets. In April, she sided with two middle school girls who were threatened with discipline for wearing the bracelets, finding the slogan is not vulgar or likely to cause a disturbance.

Easton Area School District officials last month asked McLaughlin to lift her injunction while the district’s appeal before the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is pending. They claimed the injunction leaves the district with no guidance on how to revise its dress code for the 2011-12 school year and threatens administrators’ ability to maintain order in the schools.

A middle-school student, annoyed after being disciplined by her principal for violating the school dress code, vents her frustration by posting a crude MySpace profile on the Internet parodying the principal. The profile, which the student created entirely from home and made available to a small group of friends, includes a photo of the principal but not his name or school. The profile only comes onto school grounds at the behest of the principal. Nevertheless, once the identity of the profile’s author is discovered, the school suspends her from classes for ten days.

Those are the facts of a case, JS v. Blue Mountain School District [PDF], recently decided in the student’s favor by the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The case squarely presented an issue increasingly confronted by schools and their students: How far can public schools can go in punishing students for speech that they post on the Internet outside of school? On one side are the school districts and school board associations, which argue that schools should be permitted to police their students’ speech no matter where it occurs if the speech is about the school. On the other are groups like the ACLU, which believe putting such far-reaching authority into the hands of school administrators impermissibly infringes on students’ First Amendment right to free speech.

The Third Circuit, unfortunately, did not provide a clear answer to the question. While the Court, sitting en banc, did hold that schools cannot punish students for off-campus speech simply because it is lewd, vulgar, or indecent, the majority stopped short of deciding whether schools can punish students for off-campus speech if it causes a material and substantial disruption inside the school. In a footnote, the majority said it did not need to reach that issue because the parody MySpace profile did not cause any disruption inside the school nor could it have reasonably led school officials to forecast substantial disruption in the school. The “material and substantial disruption” test was created by the US Supreme Court in its 1969 decision Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District to protect students’ free-speech rights in school while providing some leeway for school officials to maintain order and accomplish their pedagogical mission.

Although the issue of whether the so-called Tinker standard can be used to curtail students’ out-of-school speech has officially been left open by the Third Circuit, there were five votes for a more protective standard for off-campus speech. Four judges joined a concurring opinion by Judge D. Brooks Smith stating the view that students should have the same right as any other person in the community to speak outside of school. Under that standard, students’ Facebook status updates, twitter posts, and even old-fashioned letters to the editor could not be censored by school administrators unless they could show that their actions were narrowly tailored to a compelling governmental interest and represented the least restrictive means of achieving that interest. That is a much tougher test for school districts to meet than the “material and substantial disruption” test, but it is the only standard that adequately protects the free-speech rights of public-school students.

As Judge Smith recognized in his concurring opinion, allowing schools to apply the Tinker standard to out-of-school speech would have “ominous implications”: “Doing so would empower schools to regulate students’ expressive activity no matter where it takes place, when it occurs, or what subject matter it involves—so long as it causes a substantial disruption at school.” Indeed, the Second Circuit, which has applied the Tinker standard to off-campus speech where it was reasonably foreseeable that the speech would come to the attention of school officials, upheld the decision of a school district to bar a student from running for senior class secretary after she criticized school administrators on her personal blog. The student was not permitted to serve as secretary even after she was elected by her classmates as a write-in candidate.

Public schools have a responsibility to teach students about their constitutional rights. Overriding the votes of the senior class or punishing students simply because they posted critical comments about school officials on the Internet sends the wrong message about how our Bill of Rights is supposed to work. School officials who act like Big Brother or retaliate against students who criticize them do a disservice to their students and to the Constitution.

Opinions expressed in JURIST’s Hotline are the sole responsibility of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of JURIST’s editors, staff, or the University of Pittsburgh.

For at least 10 years, the State College teachers’ union has wanted the inclusion of same-gender domestic-partner benefits in school-district employee contracts, union President Holli Jo Warner said Monday.

In fact, Warner said the union — the State College Area Education Association — has asked the State College school district for that policy addition in the last two rounds of contract talks — one about five years ago, the other a decade ago.

“Through the negotiations process, we did not achieve that goal,” Warner told StateCollege.com. ” … We are currently in the process of negotiations (again) … and I’m sure it will be talked about again.”

StateCollege.com approached Warner about the subject in light of a federal lawsuit filed against the district last week.

In the case, district employee Kerry Wiessmann and her partner, Beth G. Resko, have targeted the district policy that prevents workers’ same-gender domestic partners from qualifying for the same benefits made available for opposite-gender domestic partners.

That policy, according to their complaint, violates Wiessmann and Resko’s First and 14th Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution. The women are seeking a change in the policy.

The school district is expected to respond formally in court. But in a preliminary statement released to reporters on Friday, the district administration indicated that the benefits policy in question stems from the collective-bargaining process.

“The district is precluded from making changes unilaterally for any member of the (State College Area Education Association) without discussion through” the collective-bargaining process, the statement reads.

“When and if this issue raised in this suit is brought to the bargaining table by the association, the district will consider it, just as it considers every other issue that is raised during the collective-bargaining process,” the statement goes on.

But Warner was unequivocal when reached by a reporter Monday:

Same-gender domestic-partner benefits were “definitely on the table” in past contract negotiations, she said. “The association brought it to the table as something we would like to achieve.”

Warner said the union’s objective is for same-gender domestic partners to qualify for “all the same benefits that an (opposite-gender) spouse receives.”
Just a few blocks away from the school-district offices, she noted, Penn State’s employee-benefits policy already includes that provision.

StateCollege.com approached the school-district administration Monday about Warner’s comments and is awaiting a reply.

Asked why the district had not granted the union’s request for same-gender partner benefits, Warner said she understood the district’s concern to be financial.

Expanding health coverage to include same-gender domestic partners would cost the district more money — likely to the tune of some $6,000 annually per additional person, Warner estimated.

It also would cost the district more money through paid bereavement leave, she said.

Right now, district policy allows employees one paid bereavement day for the death of a close friend, Warner said. For the death of a husband or a wife, though, the policy allows for five paid bereavement days.

Extending that benefit to cover same-gender domestic partnerships would mean more in the way of substitute-teacher expenses, Warner said.

She very roughly estimated that perhaps a dozen current district workers — and their same-gender domestic partners — would be directly affected by the policy change now sought in federal court.

Those in relationships accepted by the district as “domestic partnerships” are not “just roommates,” Warner emphasized. Rather, she said, they need to provide evidence of their committed partnerships through joint titles or other documentation.

Wiessmann and Resko share a home, financial obligations and parenting duties, their court filing shows. If they were in an opposite-gender domestic partnership, the filing says, they would qualify for the full complement of district benefits given to committed heterosexual couples.

The battle to legalize same-sex marriage may be dominating the headlines, but that issue could take years to resolve. More immediately, a growing number of companies have taken it upon themselves to make life a little more equal for their gay employees.

These companies are reaching into their own pockets to pay for an extra tax that their gay employees owe on their partners’ health insurance — something that their married heterosexual co-workers don’t have to worry about because the federal government recognizes them as an economic unit.

To gay employees, gaining equal benefits is about more than the money. The gesture itself validates their relationship with their partners at a time when the government has not.

Most heterosexuals take for granted that they can add a spouse or children to their employer’s health plan. But gay employees with partners have that option only if they work for an organization that offers domestic partner coverage.

And even when the coverage is available, it costs gay couples more because they are taxed on the value of those benefits.

Over the last year, however, as the word has gotten out about this inequity, more companies have begun to “gross up” these workers, as the policy is known.

“It very quickly became a litmus test among employees for how welcoming their firm was,” said Daryl Herrschaft, director of the workplace project at the Human Rights Campaign. “A lot of folks were very proud of their companies and wanted to tell a lot of people, and in doing so, it sparked some competition.”

The competition has become most apparent in a handful of industries, notably law firms, big consulting companies and in Silicon Valley. More Wall Street firms, meanwhile, are said to be considering the policy. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, the New York law firm, is the latest firm to follow suit. And Teach for America, the nonprofit teaching program, adopted the policy earlier this month after initially learning about it on Bucks, the personal finance blog on The New York Times Web site, which has been singling out the companies that gross up and those that do not — the New York Times Company among them.

“We realized that it was the right thing to do and we were in a position to do it, so we did,” said Rex Varner, vice president on the human assets team at Teach for America.

A small number of organizations, including Kimpton Hotels and Cisco, have had the policy in place for several years. But it wasn’t until Google started compensating its employees last June that the movement really began to take off. Apple, Facebook, Barclays, McKinsey and Bain & Company are some of the prominent names that followed suit.

Even more companies have said they publicly support same-sex marriage or equal financial treatment for gay couples, but they haven’t gone as far as adopting the policy.

About 58 percent of Fortune 500 companies extend domestic partner coverage to employees with same-sex partners, according to the Human Rights Campaign. But when you look at a broader group of companies, the numbers shrink: Only about 36 percent of large companies, or those with more than 200 workers, offered the coverage in 2009, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey. About 20 percent of small companies offered the coverage.

Even as the number of companies that “gross up” increases, they remain a distinct minority. (The online version of this column links to our running list of companies.) In fact, a large group of major corporations joined a coalition, led by the Human Rights Campaign, that supported legislation to eliminate the tax, but most of them don’t gross up their own employees.

Another group of prominent business leaders recently signed an open letter urging New York lawmakers to legalize same-sex marriage, arguing that it would help attract and retain talent. But not everyone on that list, including Lloyd A. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, for instance, has started to gross up employees within their own offices. That would also, arguably, help attract and retain talent. Both Goldman and Morgan Stanley (whose board chairman, John J. Mack, also signed the letter) said they were reviewing their policies. So we’ll see what happens.

One of the biggest obstacles to adopting the gross up policy has been concern about the cost and legal implications. Will people rush to sign up? Many firms, for instance, decided to make only same-sex employees with domestic partners eligible since opposite-sex couples have the option to marry.

“To spend money to make up for the inequities for our government and our governmental policies is a very significant thing,” said Ross Levi, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, a gay rights organization in New York. “Companies shouldn’t have to be making up for the ways that government is failing its L.G.B.T. people and our families,” he added, referring to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. That said, he added that the private sector had historically “led government in terms of equality for L.G.B.T. people.”

Generally, it would cost an employer about $2,000 to $2,500 to gross up an employee who incurred extra taxes of $1,200 to $1,500, according to Joseph S. Adams, a partner at McDermott Will & Emery who specializes in employee benefits. The numbers will vary depending on several factors, including the employee’s tax bracket and state of residence. This example assumes a 25 percent federal tax bracket (and includes rough estimates for state, local, and employment taxes for Social Security and Medicare, bringing the total tax rate to about 40 percent).

On average, a typical employee with a domestic partner will pay about $1,069 more a year in taxes than a married employee with the same coverage, according to a 2007 report by Lee Badgett, research director of the Williams Institute, which studies sexual orientation policy issues. (That figure, which is bound to be higher now given escalating health care costs, includes taxes on the benefit itself as well as the money employees would save if they could pay for their benefits using pretax dollars like heterosexual employees can. There is an exception: If the partner is considered a dependent, the extra taxes aren’t levied.)

At Barclays, which began compensating gay employees at the beginning of the year, the team working on the policy considered how it might affect their expenses. But when Barclays looked at the numbers, they concluded the cost was “not material.” And, in any case, they said it was the right thing to do.

“Too often people come with ideas requiring creativity and people start explaining obstacles about why you can’t do it,” said Jeffrey G. Davis, managing director and co-chairman of Barclays’ L.G.B.T. employee group. So they worked with their human resources department to find ways to make it as simple as possible. Instead of reimbursing employees in every paycheck, for instance, they provide a lump sum at the end of the year.

His advice to others who want to lobby their own employers is to “anticipate peoples’ concerns and questions before you go to them for approval, so you have the right answers.”

“That is the biggest part of the effort,” he said.

The Human Rights Campaign has materials on its Web site to help guide employees and their companies through the process, too.

With more companies adopting the more generous policy, others are now looking at whether they’re offering the basics for gay employees. As Cynthia Yeung, a San Francisco resident who is on the steering committee of her employer’s L.G.B.T. group, put it, “When you raise the bar, everyone has to jump a little higher to be average.”

The State College Area School District is facing a federal civil action from a school worker and her partner, both alleging that the district discriminates in its employee-benefits policy.

Kerry Wiessmann, who is an elementary-school counselor, and her partner, Beth G. Resko, brought the complaint against the district on Tuesday. Their concern is a district rule that keeps school workers’ same-sex domestic partners from qualifying for the same benefits made available for opposite-sex domestic partners, according to the filing.

In fact, the district’s “refusal to provide Ms. Wiessmann and her partner … with the same family health benefits offered to other employees and their families violates their rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, including the right to equal protection of the laws without regard to sexual orientation or sex, and the right to intimate association; as well as the Equal Rights Amendment of the Pennsylvania Constitution,” the lawsuit reads.

The school district, in discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, also is in violation of State College borough’s non-discrimination law, according to the litigation. State College attorney Andrew Shubin and several lawyers affiliated with the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Civil Liberties Foundation are representing Wiessmann and Resko in the matter.

Shubin declined to field media questions on Tuesday, but he did issue a news release.
“This is an important case for many reasons,” Shubin said in the release. “It’s about basic fairness, tolerance and equal treatment for hard-working families. It’s about our community and the kind of place it should be — a place where the Constitution and the law protect everyone.”

Local school officials had yet to see the lawsuit Tuesday afternoon, so the district declined to offer immediate comment on the case, a spokeswoman said. The litigation is filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, which is based in Scranton.

Wiessmann, who works at Ferguson Township Elementary School, joined the district’s workforce in 2003, according to the litigation. She and Resko, her partner of more than 25 years, share their lives, home, financial obligations and parental duties for their two children, it says.

It also quotes the district policy that’s accused of undermining their rights. That policy, which makes full-time employees’ documented domestic partners eligible for district health benefits, specifically excludes partners of the same gender.

As a result, according to the litigation, Resko has not been allowed the benefits that would have been allowed someone in an opposite-gender relationship. The couple has faced “significant cost” for Resko’s health coverage, the lawsuit notes.

Right now, Resko, who had been an independent contractor, is on a group health-insurance plan that costs the couple $6,600 a year for her coverage, the litigation indicates. In order to qualify for the group plan, Resko had to change her employment status and work longer hours “in an effort to maintain the same level of income she earned as an independent contractor,” according to the complaint.

Resko is of retirement age and would like to reduce her hours, but if she does so, she’ll lose her group health benefits, the complaint goes on. “Ms. Resko may not be able to obtain individual health insurance that provides the coverage she needs, or the couple may have to pay exorbitant rates for that insurance, because Ms. Resko has an existing medical condition that requires ongoing treatment.”

The suit also alleges that the SCASD benefits policy “demonstrates disrespect for Ms. Wiessmann as a person and reinforces stigma against her as a member of a minority group.”
“This policy has no purpose other than to treat same-sex couples like second-class citizens,” ACLU attorney Catherine Roper said in the news release.

Resko and Wiessmann are seeking a change in the benefits policy to grant equal treatment to same-sex domestic partners; preliminary and permanent relief that will allow Resko to receive benefits through Wiessmann’s health insurance; and unspecified compensatory damages and attorneys’ fees.

StateCollege.com is continuing to follow this story and will post more information as it becomes available.

PHILADELPHIA – Panther Valley High School ( Carbon County ) senior Jeremy Thomas will be attending his prom tonight after all. Late yesterday afternoon a judge issued a ruling prohibiting the Panther Valley School District from enforcing its unconstitutional policy requiring students to submit to random drug testing to participate in extracurricular activities, including school dances. Until yesterday, Thomas was barred from attending his senior prom because he and his parents refused to consent to random drug testing.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit on March 9, 2011, against PVSD on behalf of siblings M.T., a ninth grader, and Jeremy, who were not allowed to participate in after-school activities because of their refusal to consent to random, suspicionless urinalysis. An Eagle Scout and Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) member, Jeremy was kicked off the golf team after refusing to sign the consent form.

“We are very excited. This ruling vindicates our belief that people are innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around,” said Morgan Thomas, Jeremy and M.T.’s father. He added that his son was getting his suit today in preparation for tonight’s prom.

In his May 5 opinion granting the ACLU-PA’s request for a preliminary injunction, Judge Steven Serfass of the Common Pleas Court of Carbon County found that “the district is seeking to force an unconstitutional choice on plaintiffs without sufficient justification for the policy.” A 2003 Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling, Theodore v. Delaware Valley School District, requires schools to justify suspicionless drug testing programs with evidence of a widespread drug problem among the students being tested.

“Students shouldn’t have to choose between their rights and full participation in school. We are very pleased the judge enforced the law of Pennsylvania and hope other school districts will take another look at their own policies,” said Mary Catherine Roper , ACLU-PA senior staff attorney and one of the attorneys representing the Thomases.

The case is M.T. v. Panther Valley School District. The students and their parents are represented by Roper, Molly Tack-Hooper, and Witold Walczak of the ACLU of Pennsylvania and Stephen McConnell, Kevin Flannery, Michael Salimbene, and Kenneth Holloway of Dechert LLP.

The ACLU-PA also filed a similar lawsuit against the Delaware Valley School District , M.K. v. the Delaware Valley School District, in March over its similar drug testing policy. That case is still pending.

More about this case, including copies of the judges order, the complaint, and the school’s policy, can be found at:

http://www.aclupa.org/legal/legaldocket/mtvpanthervalleyschooldist.htm

PHILADELPHIA – The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania filed separate lawsuits in state court today to stop two northeastern Pennsylvania school districts from randomly drug and alcohol testing students who participate in extracurricular activities, including athletics and school dances, or who drive to school. The ACLU of PA believes the schools’ policies violate a 2003 Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling requiring schools to justify suspicionless drug testing programs with evidence of a widespread drug problem among students.

“These policies teach young people to accept extreme invasions of their privacy when they’ve done nothing wrong,” said Mary Catherine Roper, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Pennsylvania and one of the attorneys representing the students and their parents.

“Random drug testing is also counterproductive, as studies have shown that extracurricular activities help students avoid drug use. Schools should not be putting up barriers to students’ participation in after-school activities,” she continued.

The ACLU of Pennsylvania is representing a seventh and a ninth grader, sisters M.K. and A.K., and their parents, Glenn and Kathy Kiederer, in a lawsuit against the Delaware Valley School District ( Pike County ). DVSD requires students and their parents to consent to a mandatory initial drug and alcohol test and random drug and alcohol testing throughout the year in order to participate in extracurricular activities. Because M.K., A.K. and their parents believe that the policy violates the girls’ privacy, they have refused to sign the drug testing consent form. As a result, M.K. and A.K. are not allowed to participate in drama, art club, scrapbooking, softball, volleyball, tennis, basketball, soccer, or, ironically, Junior Students Against Substance Abuse.

“We are very frustrated that the Delaware Valley School District has ignored the State Supreme Court’s guidelines and has refused to change the drug testing policy to comply with the court opinion. We feel that the proper education for our children is to teach them to defend their constitutional rights, especially in the present times we are living in,” said Glenn and Kathy Kiederer.

The DVSD drug testing policy was declared unconstitutional by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2003 (Theodore v. Delaware Valley School) unless the school could show additional evidence that the group of students undergoing testing had a high rate of drug use. According to the complaint, the school district has essentially ignored that ruling and continued to enforce the drug testing policy. The school district has never compiled data that would support or refute the need for its policy. At an August 10, 2010 school board meeting, the district’s own solicitor admitted that the district had not “followed the Supreme Court mandate.”

“We are optimistic that the Delaware Valley School Board will follow the 2003 opinion of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and follow the Pennsylvania Constitution. This will allow our clients to participate in all co-curricular activities without violating their constitutional rights,” said Stephen McConnell, an attorney with Dechert LLP, who is representing the students and their parents pro bono.

A second, unrelated lawsuit involves two Panther Valley School District (Carbon County) students, siblings M.T., a ninth grader, and Jeremy Thomas, a twelfth grader, who are not allowed to participate in after-school activities because of their refusal to consent to random, suspicionless urinalysis. An Eagle Scout and Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) member, Jeremy was kicked off the golf team after refusing to sign the consent form. He is also not allowed to attend his prom. Both siblings and their parents, Morgan and Donna Thomas, believe that the required testing program violates their right to privacy. PVSD has not provided any data to show that drug use is a problem among its students involved in extracurricular activities.

Studies have repeatedly shown that random drug testing does not reduce student drug use. The largest national student study conducted by the U.S. government’s own program, Monitoring the Future, found in 2002 that random, mandatory drug testing had no impact on students’ rates of drug use. This study covered three years and included over 76,000 students nationwide in eighth, tenth, and twelfth grades. These researchers confirmed these findings again in 2003.

The cases are M.K. v. the Delaware Valley School District and M.T. v. Panther Valley School District. The students and their parents are represented by Roper, Molly Tack-Hooper, and Witold Walczak of the ACLU of Pennsylvania and McConnell, Kevin Flannery, Michael Salimbene, and Kenneth Holloway of Dechert LLP.

More about the cases, including copies of the complaints and the schools’ policies, can be found at:

http://www.aclupa.org/legal/legaldocket/mkvthedelawarevalleyschool.htm

http://www.aclupa.org/legal/legaldocket/mtvpanthervalleyschooldist.htm

Penn State Public Broadcasting’s third installment of the Geospatial Revolution Project deals with the technology in relation to privacy and how geospatial information affects law enforcement, war and diplomacy.

– As police departments around the country consolidate and face tough decisions on how best to use limited resources, geospatial technology has proven to be an asset. Geospatial technology allows law enforcement officials to identify crime hot spots in the communities they serve, so they can dedicate the necessary resources to these areas, thus maximizing efficiency.

Penn State Public Broadcasting’s four-part online video series, the Geospatial Revolution Project, explores the way geospatial information—such as geospatial information systems (GIS), global position systems (GPS), and digital mapping—enhances the lives of individuals as well as the efficiency of institutions like police departments. Episode Three of the series, available now, also focuses on safety, privacy and the use of geospatial technology in warfare and diplomacy.

“A surveillance society is not only inevitable and irreversible, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s irresistible—and it’s not government doing it to us, it’s us doing it to ourselves,” Jeff Jonas, member of the board of the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, said. “The more data that is available to us, the more transparent the world becomes.”

The 15-minute episode, which is divided into shorter chapters, explains the challenge of protecting personal privacy while using this technology. Cell phones with geospatial locators can be helpful in an emergency or when lost, but they can also cause harm when they are used against victims of domestic abuse or stalking. The episode identifies the risks that come along with this kind of transparency.

The episode highlights how geospatial technology can help soldiers identify improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and diplomats map human geography to better understand different cultures. Geospatial technology and digital maps were also critical in providing accurate geographic information, which world leaders used in 1995 to redraw borders to help stop the war and mass genocide in Bosnia.

The Geospatial Revolution Project Episode Three, along with the first two episodes and accompanying educational materials, is available at Penn State Public Broadcasting’s website, http://geospatialrevolution.psu.edu online.

The next episode, to be released on May 3, 2011, will explore agriculture and the environment, mapping disease, and human rights and aid.

Penn State Public Broadcasting, licensed to Penn State, produces non-commercial television, radio and online media. Our public service media programming and complementary outreach materials address important societal issues for Pennsylvania, the nation and the world.