DeMitchell and Fossey explore the use of the Equal Access Act (EAA) to challenge a school board's refusal to allow a gay-straight alliance to meet at a public high school. The EAA was enacted in 1984 expressly to allow student initiated religious groups to meet on public high school campuses.The Act makes it unlawful for any public secondary school which receives Federal funds and which has a limited open forum to deny equal access on the basis of religious, political, philosophical, or other content of speech to any students who try to meet within that limited open forum; and defines "limited open forum" as allowing one or more noncurriculum related student groups to meet on school premises. After reviewing Bd. of Ed. of Westside Community Schools v. Mergens, 496 US 226 (1990), the case in which the U.S. Supreme Court denied a challenge to the constitutionality of the EAA and articulated a test for determining if a student group is noncurriculum related, this article goes on to summarize each of the half dozen decided district court cases in which the EAA was used to challenge a school board's refusal to allow a gay-straight alliance to meet on a high school campus.

This short monograph examines leading cases concerning the rights of GLBT students to be free from harassment, the right to recognition under the Equal Access Act, First Amendment issues, and several curricular and programmatic issues. It includes a chapter with suggestions for school districts to protect students’ rights while avoiding litigation.

While courts--including the U.S. Supreme Court--have construed Title VII's "because of sex" language to include protections not explicit in the language of the statute, they have not exercised this same generosity to cover discrimination abased on sexual orientation. This reticence, seen by comparing the cases of Rene v. MGM Grand, 305 F.3d 1061 (9th Cir. 2002), and Nichols v. Azteca Restaurant Enterprises, 256 F.3d 864 (9th Cir. 2001), results in the line between gender stereotyping, which is prohibited, and sexual orientation discrimination, which is not, becoming "so thin that the distinction is confusing, unworkable, and must be wholly abandoned." These authors assert that the time has come to change this shortfall especially in the context of education.

The authors analyze date from three sources: a "Climate Survey" administered to 3,205 first year students at 37 law schools; a second survey targeting open LGBT law students, which netted 302 responses from 79 different law schools; and narratives collected from focus groups with eleven LGBT law student organizations across the country. While conditions for LGBT law students have improved since similar research ten years earlier, "this group still encounters substantial discrimination on law school campuses and in law school classrooms. This discrimination may result from overt acts, thoughtlessness, and/or neglect on the part of various actors in law school communities."

This collection of four pieces was originally presented as an AALS Workshop on the Solomon Amendment in the aftermath of Rumsfeld v. FAIR, 547 U.S. 47 (2006). Martha Ertman begins with a brief introduction to the issue. Joan Schaffner next uses events at the George Washington University Law School to ask "To what extent should student organizations be bound by the regulations that govern the GW placement office regarding military recruitment?" She believes that the "student interest in equal protection outweighs the student interest in employment," and that the FAIR decision "requires that law schools provide equal access but not equal treatment." James G. Leipold, Executive Director of NALP, reports results of a survey of law school responses, and offers three suggestions "for what law schools can and should do." Finally, the most personal account comes from Shalanda H. Baker, who tells of her expulsion from the military under DADT and being ordered to repay the costs of her Air Force Academy education.