SPRINGFIELD, Va. (CN) - Taxpayers cannot sue a school board over a LGBT-inclusive policy it added to the school district handbook, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled, upholding a lower court decision.
Andrea Lafferty, president of the conservative Traditional Values Coalition, had claimed the Fairfax County School Board decision to add the ant-discrimination policy to the handbook has had “deleterious consequences” for teachers and students
The coalition's website says it is “leading the fight to protect our kids in schools where the transgender movement is seeking to normalize their behavior through coercive, punitive regulations."
The school board voted to add the anti-discrimination policy to its handbook on Nov. 6, 2014.
Lafferty then sued the board on behalf of herself, a student, and anonymous parents in the school district, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief.
Both the trial court and the Virginia Supreme Court ruled the plaintiffs have no standing to sue.
“We address whether a student at a public high school, by and through his parents as next friends, has standing to sue the school board based on his alleged distress over potential repercussions from the school board’s expansion of its anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policy,” wrote Senior Justice Leroy Millette Jr. “We also consider whether his parents, individually, and a third resident of the county have taxpayer standing.”
Upon review, he said, the plaintiffs simply "an actual controversy sufficient" to warrant the relief sought.
Lafferty, a conservative lobbyist, is also a television commentator. Her father, Reverend Louis Sheldon, founded the Traditional Values Coalition in 1980.
Representatives of the parties did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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