© 2014 The Texas Lawbook.
By Janet Elliott – AUSTIN (November 4) – Paula Hinton had barely set foot at Winston & Strawn’s Houston office last year when the firm’s pro bono counsel called with a special request.
The Texas Civil Rights Project needed help on a case against an East Texas school district that raised novel issues of privacy concerning a lesbian student.
Photo courtesy of Fred Keinz at Winston & Strawn.
The TCRP was representing the mother of a high school softball player in a federal civil rights lawsuit. The dispute arose from a 2009 incident in which the woman’s 16-year-old daughter was allegedly “outed” by two coaches employed by Kilgore ISD.
According to a lawsuit filed by Barbara Wyatt, the coaches had called her to a softball field and said that her daughter was in an “inappropriate relationship” with an 18-year-old female. Prior to calling the mother, the two female coaches had taken the student into an empty locker room, locked the door, and questioned her about the relationship.
The case had survived a limited interlocutory appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and was headed to trial. TCRP Legal Director Wayne Krause Yang needed reinforcements.
An experienced energy litigator, Hinton was in the unfamiliar terrain of education law and student privacy. She quickly assembled a team from the firm that included Matt Tanner, Kevin Keeling, Renee Wilkerson, Gloria Martinez and Phyllis Golden.
Hinton also wanted strong local counsel familiar with the region. She turned to Jennifer Doan of Texarkana’s Haltom & Doan. Doan enlisted two of her firm’s lawyers, Christy Hawkins and Nicole Sandone.
The attorneys launched into an intense pretrial period of depositions and document review. Less than two weeks before the scheduled trial, the school district agreed to pay $77,500 to settle the lawsuit. The district also agreed to employee training on discrimination and privacy conducted by lawyers from the LGBT Section of the State Bar of Texas.
Kilgore ISD said in a statement reported by the Longview News-Journal that the settlement was a business decision of the district’s insurer. The district said it had resisted plaintiff counsel’s attempts to “bully the board into changing its policies by threatening long, expensive and protracted litigation,” according to the newspaper.
Yang called Doan and Hinton “twin tornadoes who brought the fight directly to the school district and changed Texas for the better.”
The two lawyers were recognized Saturday at the TCRP’s 24th Annual Bill of Rights Dinner with the Kristi Couvillon Pro Bono Award. Also recognized for his work on the case was Michael Clark of Duane Morris, who handled the appeal.
Other pro bono award winners were:
• Ralph Miller of Weil, Gotshal & Manges for briefing and arguing the appeal of a district court’s dismissal of TCRP’s suit challenging the unequal funding of schools within Clint ISD; and
• Cindy Saiter of Scott, Douglass & McConnico for winning summary judgment against the Corrections Corporation of America in a case involving disclosure of public information.
The awards dinner, held at the University of Texas Alumni Center, came one year after TCRP’s building was damaged in a fire. Director Jim Harrington said “sister organization” Texas Rural Legal Aid shared their office space while the building was repaired.
“The work continued,” Harrington said.
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