Senior photo leads to lawsuit

By Beverley Wang
The Associated Press

AP High-school senior Blake Douglass of Londonderry, N.H., submitted this photo for his school yearbook. In light of school shootings around the country in recent years, school officials say they don't want to be appear to be endorsing guns. Douglass, an avid hunter and sport shooter, sued in federal court after his photo was rejected.

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The 17-year-old filed a federal lawsuit yesterday to force Londonderry High School to allow the photo and give up the policy that school officials used to reject it.

"What they're doing is basically discriminating based on content or message," said Penny Dean, Douglass' lawyer and a specialist in gun cases. "You can't do that. You might want to, but you can't — and especially you can't with a broad policy like this."

An avid hunter and trap and skeet shooter, Douglass said he decided long ago on his senior photo — an outdoor shot in a sportsman's pose, with him wearing a shooting vest and holding his broken-open shotgun over his shoulder.

"He would look at his yearbooks since he's been a freshman and say, 'I can't wait until I'm a senior — this is how I want my senior picture done,' " said his mother, Kathy Douglass.

Blake Douglass saw that seniors in previous classes have posed with musical instruments, dogs, inline skates and a Ford Mustang.

"Those were their hobbies and I just want to put my hobby in," he said. "I don't see it as a threat."

School officials said the photo lacks context in the yearbook's seniors section. They offered to publish it in a separate, "community sports" section, but Douglass refused.

Principal James Elefante said that although the photo isn't threatening, "I still stand by that holding a saxophone is different from holding a shotgun."

Superintendent Nathan Greenberg said school shootings around the country in recent years make him wary of allowing the photo in the seniors section.

"Maybe it's not fair, but that's the reality," Greenberg said, adding that "part of our contention is that it could be construed that the school could be endorsing guns."
 
Douglass and his parents point to past senior photos that could be considered more objectionable, including students mugging with baseball bats, nooses and liquor bottles.

Greenberg said that although photos have been edited for content in the past, "there were some photos from time to time maybe that have slipped through and maybe shouldn't have."