having my attitude adjusted

Today my students adjusted my attitude towards lawsuits, questioning whether high school students subjected to verbal, anti-gay harassment really should have been given large financial rewards as a result of lawsuits. (For a list of some of these lawsuits, see http://www.aclu.org/lgbt-rights_hiv-aids/cost-harassment-fact-sheet-lesbian-gay-bisexual-and-transgender-high-school-stu ) Upon learning about such lawsuits one student commented something like, “When I was in high school, I should have had my friends call me names and then made a lot of money.” Couldn’t such legal precedent scare administrators away from substantively addressing things like the need for more understanding, context-specific, and deeply sustainable communication about conflicts in educational settings? Couldn’t fear of being sued make administrators unproductively repressive? Might scared administrators just suspend and expel students deemed “offenders” instead of empathically trying to look into the causes of their actions and communicating empathically with teachers and students about what is actually going on in a given situation? Is this happening in schools now? Evidence I'm aware of suggests that it is. While I want anti-gay-bashing case law in place, I do not want for most educational administrators' decisions in response to conflict to be motivated by fear of being sued. Interest in understanding, healing, and creating positive learning environments would ideally be the first motivations.