The principal of a Boston-area public high school is standing firm in his school's decision to ban a female student from wearing a T-shirt that says, "All The Cool Girls Are Lesbians."
Lynn English High School principal Tom Strangie told FoxNews.com that the student was asked to cover up the shirt because it was deemed "disruptive" by school administrators â€" not because of the student's sexual orientation.
The student, who has not been publicly identified, was asked by Assistant Principal Joseph O'Hanagan to cover up the shirt after a teacher observed her wearing it in the school's cafeteria.
The girl complied, but later penned a letter to Lynn mayor and school committee chairman Judith Flanagan Kennedy, saying she felt her right to free speech had been violated, according to the The Item newspaper, which obtained a copy of it.
She reportedly claimed in the letter that she was told not to wear the shirt “Because it's political and offensive to some people."
"Well, frankly, I'm the one who feels offended," she wrote.
The newspaper reports that the student went on to say that a number of female students freely wear shirts that read “I love boys†without being reprimanded.
But Strangie denied the claim, telling FoxNews.com, “If someone was wearing a shirt that said 'All straight girls are cool,' they'd be asked to cover up their shirt, too."
He said that the school's student handbook explicitly states that any clothing considered “disruptive†is not allowed to be worn, though he acknowledged that the rules do not define the word in detail.
Kennedy and the ACLU, meanwhile, are arguing that the girl had every right to sport the shirt at her public school.
"I did some legal research on this and I believe she is right," Kennedy told the newspaper. "I don't believe the school had the authority to ask her to cover it up."
Sarah Wunsch, a staff attorney for ACLU Massachusetts, told the New York Daily News that she sent a letter to the school on Monday, "to just give them some additional information about the law."
"The only disruption was the administrator telling her not to wear it," Wunsch told the newspaper.
FoxNews.com's Cristina Corbin contributed to this report.Â
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