Source: North County Times, Lambda Legal press release
SAN DIEGO -- Three years after a jury awarded a pair of gay students $300,000 for harassment by their Poway High School classmates, school district attorneys were in court Friday asking a three-judge panel to overturn the verdict.

The students who brought the suit were also on hand to watch as their attorneys argued that the jury's findings were proper.

One of the issues before the state 4th District Court of Appeal, California's mid-level court, is whether the jury was given proper instructions before it decided in favor of Joseph "Joey" Ramelli and Megan Donovan. The panel awarded $175,000 to Ramelli and $125,000 to Donovan.

In its summary of the case, Lambda Legal -- which represents the students -- recounts that Ramelli endured repeated anti-gay slurs, was knocked to the ground, slammed into lockers and even found notes threatening his life taped to his car in the school parking lot.

Donovan suffered similar harassment, the jury was told during the 2005 trial. She was once attacked by a student in a "Homosexuality Is a Sin" T-shirt.

Both students reported their harassment to the school principal, but it was not addressed. So they took the school to court.

In June 2005, a San Diego jury found that school officials failed to take appropriate action to protect them from harm.

The two students were forced to drop out of school, and complete their high school education at home as a result of the hostile environment. Despite reporting the incidents to school officials, authorities took minimal or no action.

Jurors found that the two were subjected to "severe and pervasive" harassment, that school officials knew or should have known about it, and that officials failed to take corrective action.

It also determined two administrators had acted with "deliberate indifference" in Ramelli's case.

Poway attorneys argue the verdict should be overturned because of what they say were faulty jury instructions. Those instructions, they said, gave the jury the impression the district was bound by state law to provide a completely harassment-free environment when in fact such a standard is unreachable.

"Those are four years of my life that I don't want to remember," Ramelli told North County Times after the hearing. "This was never about the money. This (legal battle) was designed to protect students and student rights."

Both he and Donovan are now 22, and both said they plan to head to junior college in the fall.

Among the questions posed by the judges during the hearing was whether the monetary awards were an appropriate resolution for the case.

"What is it about money damages alone that fulfills the intent of the Legislature, which is to create an environment free from harassment?" Justice Patricia Benke asked.

The justices have 60 days to issue their ruling.

The lead attorney on the case is Brian Chase, Lambda Legal's senior staff attorney based in group's Western Regional Office in Los Angeles. Lambda Legal’s Deputy Legal Director Hayley Gorenberg and co-counsel Paula S. Rosenstein and Bridget J. Wilson of the law firm Rosenstein, Wilson & Dean, P. L. C. in San Diego, join him on the case.

Full article: POWAY: School district moves to overturn $300,000 verdict | : North County Times
Lambda Legal Urges Court to Uphold Decision Finding Poway Unified School District Responsible for Not Protecting Lesbian and Gay Students | Lambda Legal press release