Fake Proms are Expensive
Warning: If you don't think sarcasm is funny, then you should skip this post.
U.S. District Judge Glen Davidson awarded celebrity student Constance McMillen over $80,000 in attorney's fees and expenses this week in her lawsuit against the Itawamba County School District for the District's bigoted efforts to exclude McMillen from the school prom. McMillen's offense was that she is gay and wanted to bring a girl to the prom as her date. Reminiscent of the 1984 movie Revenge of the Nerds, the district responded with a fake prom for McMillen and the rest of the school's “nerds.”
Here is Judge Davidson's Order. 
Here is the motion and here is the District's response, which consisted of asking the judge to nit-pick the attorney's fee itemization. Judge Davidson awarded the vast majority of the requested fees.
That was one damn expensive fake prom. MLR estimates of the District's costs include:
- staging fake prom: $5,000
- payment to McMillen: $35,000
- payment to McMillen's attorneys: $80,000
- payment to District's attorneys: $50,000
- national embarrassment: PRICELESS
- TOTAL: Approximately $170,000.
Please excuse me if my math is wrong. I am a product of Mississippi's public school system. This is in a County where the median income is $38,000 according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics.
As noted in a prior post on this case, the District's response is that it doesn't care because some sucker insurance company has to pay. Don't get your hopes up that the the District will learn anything from this. You can't fix stupid.
Constance McMillen was presumably too busy signing autographs and being the biggest celebrity in the history of Itawamba County to comment on the Court's decision.
Based on what I have read, the school did not organize the private prom, which had the effect of turning the official prom into a "fake" prom. This was done by parents and students. From the pictures I saw posted on Facebook, there only appeared to be about 50 students there, so the fact is that most students chose to stay home rather than pay to attend the private prom or attend the official prom and help Ms. McMillen make a political statement.
Am I wrong on this? Are you saying that the school actually organized the private prom?
Good news. Constance's lawyers deserve every penny.
What is sarcasm? Great post.
"the school did not organize the private prom"
The word is "collusion."