The civil commitment process, mental health evaluators, and widely held notions of appropriate sexual behavior jeopardize the personal autonomy of heterosexual girls and homosexual boys in the state’s care. This article focuses on the failure of Florida courts to play a watchdog role over diagnoses of “conduct disorder” in civil commitment proceedings, and urges child advocates take action to protect the autonomy of vulnerable minors.

Caudillo v. Lubbock Independent School District became the first case in which a court, when applying the Equal Access Act (EAA), has upheld a school district’s ban of a gay/straight alliance (GSA) from meeting on school grounds. The author of this note questions the validity of the courts reasoning on a number of grounds including: 1) an outright ban did not meet the “least restrictive method” test of protecting students from sexually explicit material, 2) access was denied based upon speculative misconduct (i.e. the meetings were inherently based on sex and sexual activity), and 3) the court incorrectly applied the “well-being exception” to the EAA, thereby creating a “heckler’s veto” (i.e. the school district contended that the GSA was excluded to protect its members from harassment).

This article questions the reasoning of Caudillo v. Lubbock Independent School District, [311 F. Supp. 2d 550 (N.D. Tex. 2004)], in which the court upheld the school district’s decision not to allow Gay And Proud (GAP) Youth to meet on school grounds. The author contends that the school district violated both the First Amendment and the Equal Access Act. The author argues that the court’s reasoning “represents a strong departure from the First Amendment and Equal Access Act jurisprudence on student speech in school settings…[and] establishes a discriminatory and unconstitutional precedent.”