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Fricke v. Lynch, 491 f. Supp. 381 (1980), was a decision in the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island that upheld the right of a gay student to bring a same-sex date to a high school dance. The Court ruled that existing free speech doctrine protected gay and lesbian students’ rights to attend their proms with same-sex dates of their choice. The case was “one of the first successful victories in the courtroom for an LGBT issue involving young people, and is routinely cited each year in numerous cases surrounding the rights of students to bring same-sex dates to school functions.”

Background
In 1979, a gay high school junior named Paul Guilbert sought his principal’s permission to bring a male escort to his junior prom at Cumberland High School in Rhode Island. The principal, Richard Lynch, “denied the request, fearing that student reaction could lead to a disruption at the dance and possibly to physical harm to Guilbert.” The student did not attend the prom.

The next year, Guilbert’s friend Aaron Fricke, who was also a gay student at Cumberland High School, again asked Lynch for permission to bring a same-sex date to a school dance. In a written letter to Fricke, Lynch denied the request because of the “real and present threat of physical harm to [Fricke], [his] male escort and to others.”

Lynch also wrote that “the adverse effect among [Fricke’s] classmates, other students, the School and the Town of Cumberland, which is certain to follow approval of such a request for overt homosexual interaction (male or female) at a class function” was sufficient ground for rejecting the request.

Fricke immediately filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island, seeking a preliminary injunction that would allow him to attend the dance.

Decision
In a 20-page decision based largely on Fricke’s freedom of speech claim, the Court decided that “even a legitimate interest in school discipline does not outweigh a student's right to peacefully express his views in an appropriate time, place, and manner.” The Court ruled that threats of physical violence against Fricke and his date gave homophobic students an unconstitutional “heckler’s veto” that would allow “them to decide through prohibited and violent methods what speech will be heard.”, N6

The judge ruled that the precedent of United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 88 S. Ct. 1673, 20 L. Ed. 2d 672 (1968), was the appropriate framework for judging the constitutionality of the Principal Lynch’s decision. O’Brien required that the government (ie: the public school) pursue the “least restrictive alternative” before making any decision to limit free speech. The judge ruled that Lynch’s decision failed “to meet [this] criterion set out in O'Brien” because the school could have taken “appropriate security measures to control the risk of harm” ; indeed, at the time of the trial, the principal had not even made “any effort to determine the need for and logistics of additional security.” The judge ruled that “the first amendment requires that such steps” be taken to investigate and implement security measures.

The Court found the free speech claim to be dispositive, and therefore ruled that it was “unnecessary” to deal at length with Fricke’s free association and equal-protection arguments. But in a footnote, the judge left the door open to equal-protection arguments by noting that “the school [had] afforded disparate treatment to a certain class of students” by setting up different policies for those who wished to bring same-sex partners to the dance. Such a policy, the Court said, could be “profitably analyzed under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Aftermath
Because of  Fricke, all American public high schools must allow gay and lesbian students to attend school functions with their same-sex partners.

In 2004, Murray High School in Utah prohibited same-sex students from participating in the promenade of their prom. Using Fricke as a precedent, the ACLU threatened to sue the high school on behalf of its gay and lesbian students. The high school reversed its policy immediately, and allowed 17-year old lesbian Heather Johnston to dance with her girlfriend at the prom.

Local newspapers covered the story heavily, often retelling the story of Aaron Fricke. Said one Utah paper: “Self-respect: Don’t go to the prom without it.”