Three defendants have been removed from a federal discrimination lawsuit against Huntsville City Schools by the family of a student who say he killed himself in 2019 as a result of being bullied in school because he was gay.
The family of Nigel Shelby, who was 15 when he took his own life, amended its lawsuit against the school district in a filing last week.
The amended lawsuit also removes all references to a school administrator’s suggestion that a suicide note might be found in Shelby’s backpack – a prominent allegation in the original lawsuit filed in April that indicated the administrator was aware of Shelby’s suicidal state of mind.
School district Superintendent Christie Finley as well as school administrators Aaron King and David Whitener are not listed as defendants in the amended lawsuit. The only remaining defendants are the board of education and Jo Stafford, who at the time was the administrator of the Freshman Academy at Huntsville High School when Shelby was a student.
Stafford is no longer an employee of Huntsville City Schools.
The court had previously dismissed as defendants Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle and Lauren Woltjen, who was an assistant principal at Huntsville High when Shelby was a student.
The amended suit also reduces the number of claims to six from nine. And unlike the original suit, there is no monetary amount specified for damages.
Attorneys for the Shelby family did not respond this week to requests for comment about the amended suit.
Despite the changes, the lawsuit still maintains its original premise – school officials, specifically Stafford — did nothing to help Shelby despite being made aware on multiple occasions of the problems he was facing.
“Nigel never felt safe at Huntsville High School,” the lawsuit said. “Throughout the six months he spent there as a freshman, Nigel was subjected to anti-gay slurs nearly every day and was routinely told that nobody cared about him and that he should kill himself for being gay. These verbal attacks happened in classrooms and hallways, sometimes in the presence of school officials. On at least one occasion, a student also physically battered Nigel on the school bus because of Nigel’s sexual orientation.”
The amended suit repeated the incident in Stafford’s office where she was dismissive of his problems and suggested he and a classmate, who was present, “get up and dance to ‘Black people’s music’ to make Nigel feel better,” the lawsuit said. The meeting convened because a classmate of Shelby became concerned when he said he had tried to kill himself days earlier, the lawsuit said. The classmate took their concerns to Stafford and brought Shelby to her office to get help, the lawsuit said.
“Stafford told Nigel that being gay was a choice and that he would have to accept the consequences of that choice — which included having to deal with ‘adult comments’ telling Nigel he didn’t deserve to live in response to Nigel’s ‘adult’ social media posts about being gay,” the lawsuit said in describing the meeting.
That meeting, the lawsuit said, occurred on April 11, 2019. Shelby took his own life a week later.
The amended lawsuit described Shelby’s parents, Camika Shelby and Patrick Cruz, as being “shocked and devastated” by their son’s suicide. School officials did not contact his parents about the problems he was facing, the lawsuit said.
Before the school system’s investigation into Shelby’s death, “neither Ms. Shelby nor Mr. Cruz were aware that Nigel had been experiencing sex-based harassment at school, on the bus, and on social media. Nor were they aware of the impact this had been having on Nigel’s education and mental health, or that Nigel and some of his classmates had met with Stafford multiple times to discuss these issues. “
Attorneys for all the defendants filed a motion to dismiss the complaint in May, saying that the individual defendants should be dropped as defendants under immunity protections. U.S. Magistrate Herman Johnson declared the motion to dismiss as moot since the plaintiffs were re-filing the lawsuit.
In a statement after the lawsuit was filed in April, the school system said, “While the district does not discuss active or pending litigation, HCS remains committed to promoting an equitable and inclusive environment. Additionally, HCS encourages any student who may be seeking support to speak with a trusted adult at their school.”
