WILDOMAR —— In what one state official is calling the first case of its kind, two students and their parents are suing a private, Christian high school for expelling the two students for allegedly being lesbians.

The students and their parents sued the California Lutheran High School Association, which oversees the operation of the high school in Wildomar, and its principal, the Rev. Gregory Bork.

The lawsuit, filed in Riverside Superior Court on Thursday, claims discrimination, invasion of privacy and unfair business practices.

It calls on the courts to prevent the school from expelling other students based on its perception of their sexual orientation. The suit asks for punitive damages in excess of $25,000.

A spokesman for state Attorney General Bill Lockyer, as well as several local, prominent Christian attorneys, said the lawsuit is groundbreaking.

"This is an unsettled area of the law," said Nathan Barankin, communications director for the attorney general. "The public policy issues are religious freedom versus the right not to be discriminated against."

The two students cited in the lawsuit are juniors who had attended Cal Lutheran since their freshman year, according to the lawsuit.

At the start of this school year, the faculty suspected that the two students may have had homosexual ideas or might have been intimate with each other, court documents state. The lawsuit does not name the students or parents to protect their privacy, it states.

On Sept. 7, the students were called into a meeting with the principal, the lawsuit states.

"Bork individually and separately interrogated the (students) in a closed room, without the parents' knowledge or consent … and asked (them) inappropriate and personal questions such as whether they loved one another and were lesbians," court documents state. "In such a manner, Bork coerced one of the (students) to admit that she 'loves' the other."

The next day, Bork allegedly called the students' parents and said the school's board had met and decided the students were not to come back to the school, the lawsuit states. The day after that, the parents confronted Bork in person and by phone, and he responded that the two girls could not stay at Cal Lutheran "with those feelings," according to the lawsuit.

In a Sept. 15 letter to the students' parents, Bork wrote that "while there is no open physical contact between the two girls, there is still a bond of intimacy … characteristic of a lesbian (relationship). … Such a relationship is unchristian. To allow the girls to attend (Cal Lutheran) … would send a message to students and parents that we either condone this situation and/or will not do anything about it. That message would not reflect our beliefs and principles."

Bork goes on to write that the school did not want to seem tolerant to the two alleged lesbian students, as it could lead others into a similar relationship and the school has a spiritual and moral obligation to keep its students from sin.

The parents' attempts to reverse the decision to expel their daughters were denied in October by the school's board of directors, the lawsuit states.

Reached by phone Tuesday morning, Bork said he was not aware of the lawsuit, and later in the day did not return phone calls seeking further comment.

The students' attorney, Christopher Hayes, said Tuesday that the lawsuit had yet to be served on the school. As for his clients, he said they have enrolled in separate schools and are not doing well.

"These young ladies had been going to this school for a long time," he said. "They wanted to finish their high school careers with each other and their other friends. They have been humiliated in that all of their friends know about their supposed sexual orientation. … They have been ostracized from those people and their high school careers have been interrupted."

Cal Lutheran enrolls 140 students, according to its Web site.

Hayes would not say whether the two students are lesbians, saying the issue is irrelevant as well as an invasion of their privacy.

"The law protects actual as well as supposed sexual orientation," he said.

With regard to the legal merits of the case, Hayes said the law is clearly on his clients' side.

"We don't believe that it is literally new legal ground," Hayes said. "We believe that California law is clear. The California Unruh Civil Rights Act … prohibits businesses from discriminating against people for various reasons."

According to the state's Department of Fair Employment and Housing Web site, the Unruh law requires "full and equal accommodations in all business establishments," including with regard to sexual orientation.

"This is not a church, it is a fee-taking school," Hayes said. "They accept non-Christians and … they accept Jews, who as a fundamental doctrine of their religion do not accept Jesus Christ. What can be more antithetical to Christianity than Judaism? California law says you cannot pick and choose who you discriminate against."

But others have a different take, including Tom Scott, vice president of operations for the Association of Christian Schools International, which represents more than 800 religious schools in the state and 4,000 nationwide. It does not represent Cal Lutheran, however.

"Private schools don't operate under public schools' standards," Scott said.

Private, religious schools do have the right to decide who attends, but recommends their officials have students and parents sign a waiver prior to admitting them asking them to adhere to Christian morals and standards as a condition of enrollment, he said.

As for Cal Lutheran's decision, Scott likened the situation to public schools expelling students for drug use or violence, saying public and private schools have the right to disenroll a student if they have cause to believe they are engaging in a destructive lifestyle.

As the Cal Lutheran case winds its way through the court system, other cases under consideration by the courts are taking on the issue of religious freedom versus sexual-orientation rights.

Earlier this month, a state appeals court ruled that two fertility doctors in San Diego County had the right to refuse to artificially inseminate a lesbian based on her marital status because it would have violated their religious beliefs. That decision is expected to be appealed to the California Supreme Court.

Robert Tyler, general counsel of the Temecula-based Advocates for Faith and Freedom law firm, which has worked on the fertility case, said the California Constitution has yet to be confronted head-on over whether its free-exercise-of-religion clause trumps the prohibition against sexual-orientation discrimination created by the state Legislature.

With the Cal Lutheran case, Tyler said, it's a debate over whether the statutorily created rights of people not to be discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation should or should not take priority over the school's constitutional rights of freedom of association and freedom of religion.

Tyler said federal courts have sided with freedom of religion in previous cases.

Contact staff writer Jennifer Kabbany at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2625, or jkabbany@californian.com.