Yeah, the real decision made by the court in the actual case, while fucked up, is not as fucked up when you read the story. She was raped by the basketball player and apparently he only got probation. That's the messed up part of the story right there. However, we must remember that this guy is also in high school (and probably a minor when the incident happened - pretty sure he'd have to be to still be on the basketball team a year later or whatever) and he plead guilty. The other messed up part of the story is that they let him back on the basketball team, but again, that's within the rights of the school to do. Here's where parents and students could have pulled together and publicly complained / boycotted the games. This probably would have put a stop to it, but they didn't. Yet the woman in question still wants to be a cheerleader, knowing full well that guy would be playing. And while being a cheerleader refuses to cheer, so she gets kicked off the team, probably not a bad decision by the principal to avoid public conflict.
And when she makes a case out of it and loses for obvious reasons, we should be shocked that she's responsible for the legal fees? It's not the court's job to make us feel better about ourselves, it's to interpret the law. And there's no law that says anyone has the right to be a cheerleader, or to be a cheerleader who doesn't cheer. Sad, but true. On the plus side, has anyone seen the Penn and Teller BS about cheerleading? This girl might have gotten kicked off the squad the day before she fell, broke her neck, and got paralyzed.
At the end of the day, she's the one who sued the school with the pointless lawsuit. The school didn't sue her, and neither did the rapist, who by the way, has his name plastered all over the internet indicating him as such.