The parents of two Washington State cheerleaders are suing their daughters’ high school for suspending them from the squad after nude photographs of the students began to circulate in the school. The students say that the two photos were distributed inadvertently.

The families charge that school officials allowed staffers to view the photos unnecessarily and that the school should have promptly reported the incident to police as a possible child pornography case.

The lawsuit also contends that the two girls were inappropriately targeted for punishment. It notes that students who may have received or forwarded the photographs, including members of the school’s football team, were not disciplined.

A school official is quoted as saying that “when you sign up to be a cheerleader — or for any student activity — you agree to certain codes of behavior.” “We consider them student leaders,” she continued, “and we want them to be role models.”

I’d want to know more about this particular case before coming to any real conclusions about it, but it does seem to me that distributing a naked picture of a fellow student without permission is a far more serious offense than taking a picture of yourself naked. That fact leaves me sympathetic to the plaintiffs in this suit, and inclined to believe that they’re raising important questions about school policy.

Update: Having done a brief search for additional reporting on this lawsuit, I have to add that I find media outlets’ eagerness to augment their coverage of this story with photographs of cheerleaders — from this high school, in uniform, with their faces blurred out — frankly repulsive.