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.

ALBANY — Lawmakers voted late Friday to legalize same-sex marriage, making New York the largest state where gay and lesbian couples will be able to wed and giving the national gay-rights movement new momentum from the state where it was born.

The marriage bill, whose fate was uncertain until moments before the vote, was approved 33 to 29 in a packed but hushed Senate chamber. Four members of the Republican majority joined all but one Democrat in the Senate in supporting the measure after an intense and emotional campaign aimed at the handful of lawmakers wrestling with a decision that divided their friends, their constituents and sometimes their own homes.

With his position still undeclared, Senator Mark J. Grisanti, a Republican from Buffalo who had sought office promising to oppose same-sex marriage, told his colleagues he had agonized for months before concluding he had been wrong.

“I apologize for those who feel offended,” Mr. Grisanti said, adding, “I cannot deny a person, a human being, a taxpayer, a worker, the people of my district and across this state, the State of New York, and those people who make this the great state that it is the same rights that I have with my wife.”

Senate approval was the final hurdle for the same-sex marriage legislation, which was approved last week by the Assembly. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed the measure at 11:55 p.m., and the law will go into effect in 30 days, meaning that same-sex couples could begin marrying in New York by late July.

Passage of same-sex marriage here followed a daunting run of defeats in other states where voters barred same-sex marriage by legislative action, constitutional amendment or referendum. Just five states currently permit same-sex marriage: Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont, as well as the District of Columbia.

At around 10:30 p.m., moments after the vote was announced, Mr. Cuomo strode onto the Senate floor to wave at cheering supporters who had crowded into the galleries to watch. Trailed by two of his daughters, the governor greeted lawmakers, and paused to single out those Republicans who had defied the majority of their party to support the marriage bill.

“How do you feel?” he asked Senator James S. Alesi, a suburban Rochester Republican who voted against the measure in 2009 and was the first to break party ranks this year. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

The approval of same-sex marriage represented a reversal of fortune for gay-rights advocates, who just two years ago suffered a humiliating defeat when a same-sex marriage bill was easily rejected by the Senate, which was then controlled by Democrats. This year, with the Senate controlled by Republicans, the odds against passage of same-sex marriage appeared long.

But the unexpected victory had a clear champion: Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat who pledged last year to support same-sex marriage but whose early months in office were dominated by intense battles with lawmakers and some labor unions over spending cuts.

Mr. Cuomo made same-sex marriage one of his top priorities for the year and deployed his top aide to coordinate the efforts of a half-dozen local gay-rights organizations whose feuding and disorganization had in part been blamed for the defeat two years ago.

The new coalition of same-sex marriage supporters brought in one of Mr. Cuomo’s trusted campaign operatives to supervise a $3 million television and radio campaign aimed at persuading several Republican and Democratic senators to drop their opposition.

For Senate Republicans, even bringing the measure to the floor was a freighted decision. Most of the Republicans firmly oppose same-sex marriage on moral grounds, and many of them also had political concerns, fearing that allowing same-sex marriage to pass on their watch would embitter conservative voters and cost the Republicans their one-seat majority in the Senate.

Leaders of the state’s Conservative Party, whose support many Republican lawmakers depend on to win election, warned that they would oppose in legislative elections next year any Republican senator who voted for same-sex marriage.

But after days of contentious discussion capped by a marathon nine-hour closed-door debate on Friday, Republicans came to a fateful decision: The full Senate would be allowed to vote on the bill, the majority leader, Dean G. Skelos, said Friday afternoon, and each member would be left to vote according to his or her conscience.

“The days of just bottling up things, and using these as excuses not to have votes — as far as I’m concerned as leader, it’s over with,” said Mr. Skelos, a Long Island Republican who voted against the bill.

Just before the marriage vote, lawmakers in the Senate and Assembly approved a broad package of major legislation that constituted the remainder of their agenda for the year. The bills included a cap on local property tax increases and a strengthening of New York’s rent regulation laws, as well as a five-year tuition increase at the State University of New York and the City University of New York.

But Republican lawmakers spent much of the week negotiating changes to the marriage bill to protect religious institutions, especially those that oppose same-sex weddings. On Friday, the Assembly and the Senate approved those changes. But they were not enough to satisfy the measure’s staunchest opponents. In a joint statement, New York’s Catholic bishops assailed the vote.

“The passage by the Legislature of a bill to alter radically and forever humanity’s historic understanding of marriage leaves us deeply disappointed and troubled,” the bishops said.

Besides Mr. Alesi and Mr. Grisanti, the four Republicans who voted for the measure included Senators Stephen M. Saland from the Hudson Valley area and Roy J. McDonald of the capital region.

Just one lawmaker rose to speak against the bill: Rubén Díaz Sr. of the Bronx, the only Democratic senator to cast a no vote. Mr. Díaz, saying he was offended by the two-minute restrictions set on speeches, repeatedly interrupted the presiding officer who tried to limit the senator’s remarks, shouting, “You don’t want to hear me.”

“God, not Albany, has settled the definition of marriage, a long time ago,” Mr. Díaz said.

The legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States is a relatively recent goal of the gay-rights movement, but over the last few years, gay-rights organizers have placed it at the center of their agenda, steering money and muscle into dozens of state capitals in an often uphill effort to persuade lawmakers.

In New York, passage of the bill reflects rapidly evolving sentiment about same-sex unions. In 2004, according to a Quinnipiac poll, 37 percent of the state’s residents supported allowing same-sex couples to wed. This year, 58 percent of them did. Advocates moved aggressively this year to capitalize on that shift, flooding the district offices of wavering lawmakers with phone calls, e-mails and signed postcards from constituents who favored same-sex marriage, sometimes in bundles that numbered in the thousands.

Dozens more states have laws or constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage. Many of them were approved in the past few years, as same-sex marriage moved to the front line of the culture war and politicians deployed the issue as a tool for energizing their base.

But New York could be a shift: It is now by far the largest state to grant legal recognition to same-sex weddings, and one that is home to a large, visible and politically influential gay community. Supporters of the measure described the victory in New York as especially symbolic — and poignant — because of its rich place in the history of gay rights: the movement’s foundational moment, in June 1969, was a riot against police at the Stonewall Inn, a bar in the West Village.

In Albany, there was elation after the vote. But leading up to it, there were moments of tension and frustration. At one point, Senator Kevin S. Parker, a Brooklyn Democrat, erupted when he and other supporters learned they would not be allowed to make a floor speech.

“This is not right,” he yelled, before storming from the chamber.

During a brief recess during the voting, Senator Shirley L. Huntley, a Queens Democrat who had only recently come out in support of same sex marriage, strode from her seat to the back of the Senate chamber to congratulate Daniel J. O’Donnell, an openly gay Manhattan lawmaker who sponsored the legislation in the Assembly.

They hugged, and Assemblyman O’Donnell, standing with his longtime partner, began to tear up.

“We’re going to invite you to our wedding,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “Now we have to figure out how to pay for one.”

Danny Hakim and Thomas Kaplan contributed reporting from Albany, and Adriane Quinlan from New York.

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

PHILADELPHIA — An attorney for two Easton Area Middle School girls threatened with discipline last fall for wearing rubber bracelets with the slogan “I ♥ Boobies!” to promote breast cancer awareness argued in a hearing Friday the message wasn’t intended to be sexual and didn’t warrant the school’s ban on the apparel.

The bracelets use the heart symbol popularized by New York’s “I love New York” campaign.

School district solicitor John Freund told U.S. District Judge Mary A. McLaughlin that the intent didn’t matter; it was the perception and context that mattered. Testimony from administrators in the district’s seventh- and eighth-grade middle school building clearly shows other students saw a sexual double entendre in the message.

Brianna Hawk, 13, and Kayla Martinez, 12, who are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, sued the district after being suspended for refusing to remove the bracelets. They argue the district’s ban violates their First Amendment right to free speech.

Team 4 investigator Paul Van Osdol reported that the e-mail in question was circulated last summer while the federal government was trying to contain the massive Gulf oil spill. It showed an image of Obama walking along a Gulf beach with the caption, “Another tar ball washed up on the shore.” In a memo, a Centers for Rehab Services official called it “an inappropriate e-mail that contained political and discriminatory content.”
The lawsuit said the e-mail led the company to fire Deborah Bonanno and James Sprung, who received the e-mail and forwarded it to co-workers.

In court papers, an attorney for Bonanno and Sprung said, “The motivation behind CRS’ termination was to stifle (the employees’) freedom of expression on a matter of public concern” — namely, the Gulf disaster.
Vic Walczak, the ACLU’s legal director in Pennsylvania, said employees have “very few” rights to sound off at work.
Walczak said he had not seen the lawsuits, but he said the Constitutional right to free speech does not apply when someone uses a workplace computer.

“They can say, ‘We don’t want any political discussion, we don’t want any religious discussion, we don’t want any discussion of Democrats, you’re free to talk about Republicans.’ Again, while you couldn’t do that if you were the government, when you’re a private employer, you call the shots,” Walczak said.
Companies also have the right to control some personal behavior outside the workplace.
A spokeswoman for UPMC — which is affiliated with Centers for Rehab Services — did not comment on the lawsuit but said that UPMC has a long-standing zero-tolerance policy for e-mails that are racially, sexually or otherwise offensive.