HSLDA Media Release	January 31, 2000

Calvert County home schoolers file suit against county commissioners

CALVERT COUNTY, MD — Two Calvert County residents filed a civil rights complaint today in the United States District Court at Baltimore, against the chief of Calvert County Parks and Recreation Department and the Calvert County Board of Commissioners.

The two complainants are parents who home school their children. The complaint was filed on their behalf by the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), a national advocacy organization based in Virginia.

Lydia Goulart and Kyle Travers have been repeatedly denied permission to conduct workshops for home school students in Calvert County’s taxpayer-funded community centers. The community centers are generally available to citizens of the community, including organized groups, for workshops, lectures, and other educational experiences.

But home school parents are the exception. Though unwritten, a policy and practice have developed by which community groups are allowed to use the community centers, but home school groups are not.

The Calvert County Parks and Recreation “Community Center Use Policy” is a five-page document that includes two addenda. It nowhere prohibits the use of county community centers by home school groups, nor of any other educational activity, provided the group is neither a business nor a for-profit activity.

However, in an interoffice memo, Chief of Parks Paul D. Meadows said “the Board of County Commissioners directed that the use of community center facilities for the purpose of home schooling would not be permitted.”

According to the complaint, denying use of community centers to home school groups is an exclusion from a public forum and therefore a violation of First Amendment speech protection. Because they are being discriminated against as home schoolers, it is also a violation of their 14th Amendment right to equal protection under the law.

HSLDA attorney David Gordon said, “Home schoolers don’t want special treatment, they just want equal treatment.”