A federal appeals court heard arguments on Wednesday from a religious liberty group that opposed mandated anti-harassment training at an Eastern Kentucky high school.

The Alliance Defense Fund sued on behalf of a group of parents and Timothy Allen Morrison, a student at Boyd County High School, where the training was implemented. Morrison appealed a ruling from a lower court to the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.

The Arizona-based group alleged that Morrison and other students were prohibited from speaking out against homosexuality at the school.

“He was not allowed to share his religious beliefs with other students because of the policy,” said Joel Oster, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, who spoke before the court on Wednesday.

The policy at the high school has since been amended with input from the Christian group and the American Civil Liberties Union, Oster said.

“What’s at issue in this appeal is whether or not the policy that existed previously violated students’ constitutional rights,” Oster said.

The American Civil Liberties Union joined the case on behalf of the school district in an effort to keep the training classes in place. But the ACLU told the court on Wednesday that anti-gay policies also need to respect the First Amendment rights of students.

“We’ve always believed that it’s entirely possible for schools to enact policies that keep gay and lesbian students safe while still respecting the First Amendment rights of students who hold anti-gay beliefs,” said Sharon McGowan, a staff attorney with the group’s national Lesbian and Gay Rights Project.

“The fact is, you can’t just punish speech just because the listener reacts negatively to it.”

The anti-harassment training sessions were part of a settlement in 2004 of a three-year dispute between the Boyd County school district and a now-defunct gay-rights group that wanted recognition as an extracurricular group.

Morrison, his parents and two other parents sued the Board of Education over the training requirement.

U.S. District Judge David Bunning ruled in February 2006 that Morrison and other students had no religious or free speech right to opt out of the training.

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