LGBT civil-rights group hires 2nd attorney in Dallas-based South Central Region as fight for equality shifts to Heartland
WELL SCHOOLED | Paul Castillo, who recently joined Lambda Legal’s Dallas office, is a veteran of the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, where he dealt with anti-LGBT bullying cases. (Anna Waugh/Dallas Voice)
Attorney Paul Castillo isn’t new to the legal fights surrounding civil rights issues, but now he’ll be able to help fight for LGBT equality.
Castillo is the new addition to Lambda Legal’s South Central Region headquarters in Dallas, giving the office two attorneys for the area that covers Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado.
Castillo, who started in July, said that while he’s still getting a feel for the organization, he’s excited about the future work he’ll do.
“At this point, I’m getting my feet wet,” he said about current projects. “I’m getting a feel for the organization and the region. … I think it’s a remarkable organization and I’m excited to be a part of it.”
Ken Upton, senior supervising staff attorney in the Dallas office, has been the only attorney covering the region. He said balancing the workload for the region’s eight states has been a challenge in the past and now Lambda’s outreach can expand.
“It was just time,” Upton said. “We see a lot of opportunity in the South Central Region and it all came together at a time when the board was willing to put the resources into moving a lot of effort down into the Southern states.”
Upton said Castillo will help the growing equality efforts in the South, especially in Texas where Attorney General Greg Abbott has continued to challenge LGBT rights from gay divorce to the recently passed nondiscrimination ordinance in San Antonio.
“This is a political system in Texas that is fighting back because I think it sees the writing on the wall and it feels threatened,” Upton said. “I’m excited and I think you’re going to see a lot of things happening in the next few years that are going to indicate a much higher level of engagement in this part of the country.”
Castillo, a Texas native from El Paso, previously was a lawyer in private practice in Ohio and worked for the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, both in the Texas regional office and the office in Ohio. In his role he enforced federal civil rights statutes and ensured equal access to education for students. He even handled bullying and harassment complaints filed by LGBT students.
“It was a great experience and I’m very passionate about youth and certainly bullying and harassment of LGBT students and just students in general,” Castillo said.
He said his work taught him that many parents lack information as far as where they can turn when their LGBT students are being bullied. And schools often lack knowledge or the information on their website on what students and parents should do.
Some of Castillo’s cases enforced Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits discrimination based on sex.
When cases came in because a student was harassed for being gay, the law applied because while it didn’t protect sexual orientation, it protected students based on the failure to conform to gender-based stereotypes.
Castillo said the cases led to the Texas Association of School Boards adding language to its model school policy, clarifying that Title IX protects a student’s failure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity and femininity. Many school districts adopted the language for the 2012-13 school year, when schools were already updating the state-mandated bullying policy.
“As a result of some of the settlement that we got from our cases, it just really sent a message to schools all over the country that they should take seriously complaints,” Castillo said. “Just because a student is gay or is perceived as gay does not mean that [schools] don’t also have potential federal obligations as well.”
Castillo sees his new role at Lambda Legal as a way to create future change on behalf of the LGBT community and defend their civil rights in areas that aren’t as progressive as other parts of the country.
“I think there are tremendous opportunities all across Southern states to engage and defend civil rights of all LGBT individuals, particularly in some of the areas where there are not laws to enforce, including areas such as employment, HIV and transgender issues,” he said. “Lambda Legal plays a tremendous part in not only the court system, but also in terms of policymaking and cooperating with our legislators to kind of help guide them with respect to the laws that we’ve seen that are effective in other places.”
After working for the federal government on civil rights enforcement, Castillo said he’s learned that the fight for equality never ends no matter how far you’ve come, even with landmark U.S. Supreme Court rulings in June. But he’s ready to help gain more ground in the fight.
“What I’m excited about is being a part of those changes and the changes that are to come,” he said. “Even when we have laws in place, there will still be discrimination and there will be a need for people to fight for equality.”
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition September 13, 2013.