By Kirsten Bokenkamp, Senior Communications Strategist, ACLU of Texas

Being a teenager isn't easy. Kids can be hard on each other, and students must contend with the harsh realities of bullying, of lunch rooms fights, of students picking on one another, and of ending friendships over teenage love — all while trying to get an education to prepare them for adulthood, college and a career. Teachers and administrators are vested with the critical responsibility of creating and maintaining an environment where kids feel safe and supported so they can focus their attention on learning — the real mandate of public schools.

Unfortunately, it doesn't always work that way, as one Texas student, called Faith (not her real name), found out last year, after she was raped, at school, by a fellow student. Faith took the brave step of reporting her rape to school officials only to be told to "work it out" with her rapist.

What?!? "Work it out"???

This is rape we are talking about — a violent and invasive act that often requires intensive rehabilitation for the victim. The student needed support and protection from the school officials to whom she reported the assault, and instead, received the opposite. They blew it off.

And it gets worse. The officials at her school ultimately charged her with sexual misconduct, and sent her to the same off-campus alternative school as her rapist, where she "had to not only face him, but the bullying of others because he bragged about it."

We couldn't sit back and watch. Many people often think of Title IX as a way to ensure there is no discrimination based on sex in school athletics, but the mandate of Title IX expands way beyond that limited scope. Last fall, the ACLU Women's Rights Project and the ACLU of Texas filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) on behalf of Faith. We asked the OCR to determine whether the district had violated its obligations under Title IX and requested that the OCR undertake a compliance review of the school district.

All students have the right to feel safe in school, and part of the job of school officials is to protect vulnerable students. ACLU attorneys, with cooperating counsel from Weil Gotshal and Manges LLP, were able to get Faith out of the disciplinary alternative education program she had been sent to with her attacker, and into another school district so she could complete her senior year in safety and graduate on time. Additionally, we sent letters to each of Texas' more than 1,000 public school district superintendents to remind them of their obligations under Title IX, and to ask them to take a closer look at their policies to ensure that what happened to Faith will not happen to other students.

If you know of or have experienced a similar situation contact the ACLU, and if you want to find out what you can do to strengthen Title IX enforcement, visit our new Title IX page.

By Shantelle Hicks, ACLU client

When I walked into the school gymnasium, every kid in my entire middle school was staring right at me — all 400 of them. It was like a bad dream.

I was confused why the middle school department head had called me into the junior high assembly in the first place. Students who had attended this particular assembly last year didn't have to attend again and were free to work on homework and other assignments in their home room.

But I soon found out why.

After they called me away from homeroom into the assembly, the school department head made me stand up in front of my entire middle school and announced to everyone that I was pregnant. Until that moment, the only other student at school who knew was my sister. I was embarrassed, hurt and angry.

After they finished humiliating me in front of everyone at school, they had me sit back down in the bleachers. Some boys sitting behind me started kicking the back of my seat and harassing me. Soon all the other kids in school were teasing me, calling me names like "mama bear" and asking to touch my stomach.

I feel betrayed by my school. It's true that I was pregnant, but that doesn't mean I deserved to be harassed and publicly shamed in front of everyone. I deserve the same educational opportunities as every other student, boy or girl, pregnant or not. But some of the administrators at my boarding school felt that because of my pregnancy, I no longer belonged.

Two weeks before they announced my pregnancy to all my classmates, they tried to kick me out of school completely. When my mother told the school department head that I was pregnant, they said I could no longer attend my school because I would "set a bad example for the other girls." My mother contacted the ACLU and they told my school that it is illegal to discriminate against students because they are pregnant. After four days of missed classes, the school finally told me I could come back.

So when they couldn't kick me out of school, they decided to publicly humiliate me. Maybe they thought if they embarrassed me enough, I'd leave on my own. But I won't. I'm going to finish my education, graduate from high school then go to college so I can study nursing or criminal investigation.

Along with the ACLU, my family and I decided to sue my school, because we know what they did to me was wrong. It was wrong and we don't want any other female student to be treated the way I was treated. Pregnant and parenting students belong in public schools too, and we have the same rights as any other students. Hopefully this lawsuit will make schools everywhere start giving teen parents the respect and support we need to be successful students.

Shantelle Hicks is in the eighth grade at Wingate Elementary School in Fort Wingate, New Mexico. Wingate Elementary is a boarding school for Native American students grades K-8, run by the Bureau of Indian Education. On February 7, 2012, Shantelle gave birth to a healthy 8lb, 7oz girl named Georgiana. She returns to classes on March 19.

When graduating senior Ceara Sturgis chose to wear a tuxedo for her senior yearbook photo, rather than the drape typically reserved for girls, her school responded by excluding her entirely from the senior portrait section of the yearbook. The ACLU represented Ceara in a sex discrimination lawsuit against her school district.

Let me explain. I’m a graduate of Wesson Attendance Center Class of 2010. I loved my high school. I had great friends, I got good grades, I played soccer and was in the band, and I got along well with my teachers. I stayed out of trouble. My high school experience was pretty unremarkable, actually, until it came time for senior year portraits.

I’ve never been what you’d call a girly-girl. I feel uncomfortable in dresses and am much happier wearing T-shirts and khaki shorts. I always find clothes that I like in the boys’ section, rather than the girls’. But this was never an issue at school at all. Nobody ever made me feel weird or like an outcast. I was just Ceara.

For senior portraits, the school said that boys must wear a tuxedo and girls must wear a drape that made them look like they’re wearing a dress. I tried on the drape, but I just felt so uncomfortable. Imagine forcing a typical “jock” guy to wear a ball gown, and have that be the defining image of him in his high school years forever. That’s how I felt wearing the drape. It was humiliating to me to pretend to be something I wasn’t.

I really wanted to wear a tuxedo. No one flipping through the yearbook would notice anything amiss…I would blend right in with the other kids in formal wear. So we took the picture that way, and I even checked with the superintendent to make sure it was okay. He said it was, though the school board still threatened to not print the picture.

I tried to reason with school officials throughout the year, but when we got our yearbooks that spring, I was crushed to see that not only was my senior portrait removed from the yearbook, but my name wasn’t even in the senior section as “not pictured.” It was as though I didn’t exist in my senior class.

I didn’t want to pick a fight with my school, but what they did wasn’t fair. So, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, I filed a discrimination lawsuit against the school. Last week, the school agreed to change its policy so that all students will be wearing the same cap and gown in their portraits. What’s more, they’ve agreed to change their anti-discrimination policy to emphasize that everyone has the right to equal protection under the Constitution.

Public schools should never make a student feel like an outcast just for being who they are. LGBT kids and gender-nonconforming kids deserve to feel welcomed and safe in school. The yearbook is a significant rite of passage. Anyone who’s been to high school can relate to the excitement of cracking the spine for the first time and flipping to see their picture. The yearbook is a keepsake to be treasured with family and friends, so your kids and grandkids and nieces and nephews can see what you were like when you were their age.

Schools have a duty to treat all of their students equally. I’m glad we reached a resolution so nobody will ever have to go through what I went through again. And that, to me, is very much worth the trouble.

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By Ariela Migdal, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Women's Rights Project

When a girl tells a teacher or coach that she was raped in the hallways or parking lot of her high school, is her school allowed to make her leave school, drop a class, or quit a team or activity? Can her school tell her to "work it out" one-on-one with the boy who attacked her? If the school investigates the attack, is it appropriate for the school to rely on gender stereotypes in trying to figure out what happened, such as assuming that the sex was consensual because the victim didn't cry when she reported it, or because the victim and attacker were dating?

The answer to all of these questions is NO, but many high schools haven't gotten the message, and many students don't know their rights at school include the right to an equal education free from gender-based violence, dating violence, and sexual harassment and assault. The ACLU has heard from kids around the country that schools do all of these things when responding to students' reports about gender-based violence. That's why we want high school and middle school students to know that schools have a responsibility under federal law to protect your right to a safe learning environment, and that your school cannot punish or pressure you for being a victim of violence or harassment.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is a civil rights law that applies to all public schools and any private school that receives federal funding. It says that schools cannot discriminate based on sex, including on the basis of sex stereotypes, in any education program or activity. Under Title IX, sex discrimination can include rape, sexual assault, dating violence, and sexual harassment that the school knows about, or should know about. Schools can be held responsible under Title IX if they ignore or respond inappropriately to gender-based violence or harassment that is severe or pervasive enough to deprive a student of equal access to education, or to an educational activity like being on a team or in the band. Every school must have a Title IX coordinator, a person who deals with complaints of sexual violence, and schools must tell students who that person is and how to contact him or her.

To learn more about your rights under Title IX and what your high school or middle school should and should not do when responding to reports of gender-based violence, download the ACLU's Know Your Rights information to your phone or computer.

If you are a college student, you can learn more about your Title IX rights and your college's responsibilities here, and specific information about your college's responsibility to protect your right to safe housing here.

By Chris Hampton, Youth and Program Strategist, ACLU LGBT and AIDS Project

Few things shock us here at the ACLU national office, but when a student from Virginia emailed us this image a few months ago, more than one of us gasped out loud:

This was what the student saw when he tried to visit the website for the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) from a computer at his school. The stop sign was bad enough to begin with, but we could hardly believe the veiled threat implied by the school's web filtering software's ominous warning, "Your Internet usage is monitored and logged."

Some schools have improperly configured their web-filtering software to illegally censor LGBT-related sites such as the GSA Network and the GLSEN's website. At the same time that they block access to websites for positive LGBT rights organizations, those schools still allow access to anti-LGBT sites that condemn LGBT people or urge us to try to change our sexual orientation. This is called viewpoint discrimination, and it's illegal.

Beyond being illegal, when schools block access to positive LGBT information, they block information that could be vital for troubled LGBT youth who either don't have access to the Internet at home or don't feel safe accessing such information on their home computers.

In 2009, we took on two school districts in Tennessee over their unconstitutional web filtering policies with Franks v. Metropolitan Board of Public Education, a lawsuit that resulted in increased access to positive LGBT information for students in dozens of school districts around the state. Because we suspect this kind of illegal censorship is being practiced in many schools across the U.S., the ACLU is teaming up with Yale Law School to launch a campaign called "Don't Filter Me" to assess censorship of web content in public high schools. The campaign asks students to check to see if web content geared toward the LGBT communities is blocked by their schools' web browsers. Students can report instances of censorship to the ACLU LGBT Project.

If you're a public high school student and would like to know more about your school's web filter, check out this video showing how to test whether your school is illegally filtering content and how to report censorship:

Students who want to report unconstitutional web filtering at their schools can fill out a form at http://action.aclu.org/dontfilterme. More information on the ACLU's work on LGBT school issues can be found here: http://www.aclu.org/safeschools.

By Jennifer Dalven, Director, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project

Thirty-eight years ago today, the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that legalized abortion and helped to ensure that women and their families could decide for themselves whether to have a child. Within just a few years of the Roe decision, Congress stripped coverage for abortions from the Medicaid program, making access to abortion services harder to obtain for low-income women. Today, some politicians are still working to pass laws that will make it impossible for all women and their families to buy insurance policies that cover abortion.

Congress started this ball moving again last year. When it passed the health care reform law, it included restrictions making it more onerous for insurance companies to sell, and therefore for women and their families to buy, insurance policies that include coverage for abortion. A new bill proposed by Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey would effectively stop private insurance from providing coverage for abortion completely.

Abortion is part of basic health care for women and should be included in health insurance plans along with other pregnancy related care. Contact your representative and ask them to oppose the Smith bill!

State legislatures are also attempting to interfere with families’ private decisions. Just last year, we saw politicians in five states ban insurance companies from selling, and ban women from buying, policies that cover abortion in the new exchanges, and this year many more states are expected to follow suit.

We may not all agree about abortion, but we can agree that when a woman discovers that something has gone wrong during her pregnancy, she deserves the peace of mind that she will be able to get the health care she needs. The same goes for a woman facing an unintended pregnancy. She should be able to make the best decision for herself and her family, whether that decision is raising the child, adoption or abortion.

No woman plans to have an abortion, but that is the point of health insurance. It is there to cover our unexpected medical needs. In fact, insurance companies already recognize the need to provide for every scenario. That’s why the majority of plans currently include coverage for abortion care. Politicians should not be working to take away coverage that already exists for most women.

Deciding whether and when to become a parent is one of the most private and important decisions a person can make. It is a decision that should be made by a woman, her family, and her doctor. Nearly four decades after Roe v. Wade changed the legal landscape for women across this country, politicians must stop trying to interfere with private medial decisions by playing politics with a woman’s health.

By Sam Ritchie, ACLU

This week is Ally Week, an annual event encouraging allies of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students to stand up against anti-LGBT bullying and harassment in schools. A project of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), Ally Week is a time when students nationwide organize events that serve to identify, support and celebrate allies to LGBT students. Most students ask their peers, teachers and school staff to sign this pledge:

I believe all students, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression, deserve to feel safe and supported. That means I pledge to:

• Not use anti-LGBT language and slurs;
• Intervene, if I safely can, in situations where other students are being harassed;
• Support efforts to end bullying and harassment.

But we also believe that LGBT students shouldn’t have to wait until they are out of school for their lives to get better. All students — gay and straight alike — deserve to feel safe and respected at school. The fact that 9 out of 10 LGBT students report being harassed, bullied or called names in the classrooms and hallways of their schools because of their sexual orientation or gender identity is a tragic situation that needs to get better today.

There are few moments that make me more proud to work at the ACLU than when we support students who are standing up against discrimination in their schools. Students like Constance McMillen, who fought back when her school denied her right to wear a tuxedo at prom and bring her girlfriend as her date. Or Ceara Sturgis, who is suing her school over their refusal to include her official senior portrait in the yearbook because she wore a tuxedo for the picture — as all of the boys did — instead of the revealing drape the girls were required to wear. But also students like Heather Gillman, a straight ally who was sick and tired of the culture of intimidation, harassment and censorship of LGBT students and allies in her Florida high school, and so sued for (and won!) the right to wear a T-shirt that expressed her support of a lesbian classmate.

LGBT students are far too often forced to stand up for themselves in the face of discrimination. What makes being an ally so remarkable is that it is an act of selflessness and compassion that has a huge impact on those around you. When an ally stands up and says “No, I won’t allow this to happen here,” when he or she could just as easily have said nothing, people notice. And they begin to see the ways that they too can become part of the solution to anti-LGBT bullying.

I hope you’ll take this opportunity to do something to be an ally to LGBT students. If you are a student, check out our Youth & Schools page and the Ally Week website to see how you can make your school a safer, more accepting place for your LGBT peers.

If you are a teacher or member of school staff, check out GLSEN’s Educators page to learn more about simple things you can do to support your students.

If you’re a parent, talk to your kids about anti-LGBT bullying and ask your school’s administration what they are doing to ensure a safe learning environment for all students.

And if you’re not involved in a school community, you can still help by asking your representatives and senators in Congress to support the Student Non-Discrimination Act, proposed federal legislation that will help ensure safe schools for all students, no matter their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Happy Ally Week everyone!