School Boots Student Groups After Gay Club Forms

A New Mexico school district has forbidden all extra-curricular clubs from meeting during school hours or using school resources—right after a gay-straight alliance applied to become a club. The Clovis school board says it’s purely a coincidence, and that it had already been reviewing the policy, but the ACLU is suspicious. “This sort of tactic has been used in the past,” an ACLU of New Mexico rep tells Reuters, “A lot of alarm bells went off when we saw this.”

The club will still be free to meet after school—but not to put up fliers, make announcements, or otherwise advertise its existence. “Now it’s almost an underground operation,” one senior at the school tells Reuters. This isn’t the school’s first brush with this kind of controversy, either; in 2008, there was a public outcry when lesbian couples were featured in yearbook photos. The principal now reviews all potentially controversial yearbook content. (More school board stories.)