ANN ARBOR -- Three federal judges in Michigan now have ruled that school districts violated the free speech rights of students.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen said the Ann Arbor School District acted improperly in the case of a Roman Catholic student who wanted to express her views on homosexuality.

The case is "about tolerance of different, perhaps, 'politically incorrect' viewpoints in the public schools," Rosen wrote.

At the 2,700-student Ann Arbor Pioneer High School, students held a Diversity Week in March 2002 that included discussions on race, religion and sexual orientation.

One panel organized by the Gay/Straight Alliance included six religious leaders and was titled "Religion and Homosexuality." The panel was arranged with the belief the leaders supported the view that religion and homosexuality aren't inconsistent -- and that all were "welcoming and affirming" of gay rights.

Betsy Hansen, a member of Pioneers for Christ, asked that an alternative viewpoint be added to the panel: that in her view, the Bible teaches that homosexuality is a sin. The district refused.

A faculty adviser, Sunnie Korzdorfer, sent organizers an e-mail saying the school might face legal action if they kept another viewpoint off the panel.

"They have a legal right to say that homosexuality is not a valid lifestyle. That is the bottom line," she wrote. "I am treading on shallow ground here, as I do not want to get sued."

Hansen was then offered a chance to make a two-minute speech at an assembly. School officials read a draft of the speech and said she couldn't read a section that criticized Diversity Week.

"I completely and whole-heartedly support racial diversity, but I can't accept religious and sexual ideas or actions that are wrong," she wrote, in the section that was deleted by school officials.

Hansen and her mother filed suit against the district in July 2002.

Rosen said the district's decision to "censor" Hansen's speech was discrimination and violated her First Amendment and 14th Amendment equal protection rights.

Ann Arbor Public Schools "discriminated against Betsy Hansen on the basis of both message and religion, denying her the right to deliver her own message while at the same time affording the (Gay/Straight Alliance) the right to deliver its own religious message," Rosen ruled.

But one teacher at the school, Parker Pennington, told the student newspaper that "allowing adults hostile to homosexuality on that panel would be like inviting white supremacists on a race panel."

Because of Hansen's suit, the district canceled Diversity Week this year.

In October, U.S. District Judge Patrick Duggan declared the Dearborn Public Schools' decision to prohibit a student from wearing a T-shirt that called President Bush an "International Terrorist" was unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge David Lawson also struck down a 1999 Michigan law that directs punishment for any student found to have committed a "verbal assault" against a fellow student or school staffer. A Mount Pleasant student was suspended for reading a critical commentary of his school's tardy policy in the cafeteria.

Although he upheld the suspension because the student personally attacked a teacher, he said students had the right to criticize district policies.

You can reach David Shepardson at (313) 222-2028 or dshepardson@detnews.com.