LGBTQ+ middle schoolers took a conservative Virginia school board to court to protect their rights — and won

For nearly a year, LGBTQ+ students in one rural Virginia county watched the adults overseeing their education move the goalposts.Students at King George Middle School followed the rules to establish a Gay-Straight Alliance. The principal approved it. Seventeen students expressed interest. Then conservative backlash erupted on Facebook, the club was suspended, and the King George County School Board changed its policy so middle school students could no longer form noncurricular organizations.Now, after being sued in federal court, the board has changed the rules back.The board voted unanimously on Friday to allow “secondary school students” to organize and conduct meetings of noncurricular groups, according to the Fredericksburg Free Press. The revision removes language adopted last November that restricted those organizations to King George High School.The September 11 vote followed a closed session that began at 8 a.m. for briefings involving “actual or probable litigation.” Board members did not publicly mention the lawsuit brought by two middle school students and their families.But one week earlier, a federal judge disclosed that the litigation had produced a settlement.“Having been advised that the parties have reached a settlement,” Senior U.S. District Judge Robert E. Payne wrote in a September 4 order obtained by The Advocate, “any further discovery deadlines are stayed until further order of this Court.”The order came one day after the parties attended a settlement conference before U.S. Magistrate Judge Summer L. Speight. It halted a case that had been moving unusually quickly toward a resolution in court.Payne had scheduled a bench trial for October 27 at 10 a.m. in Richmond, less than three months after the lawsuit was filed. The trial was set to decide the merits of the students’ claims, including their request for a permanent injunction requiring the district to allow the GSA to operate.The judge had previously denied the students’