The Lewis & Clark teaching student removed from his classroom by the Beaverton School District after he mentioned gay marriage to a fourth grader is will sue for discrimination if the teacher is not reinstated. Seth Stambaugh's story, first reported in the Mercury, blew up into a national issue after he was banned from the district on September 15 for an "inappropriate" conversation in which a student asked about his marital status and Stambaugh responded that it would be illegal for him to get married, because he would choose to marry a man. A petition supporting Stambaugh on Change.org gathered 4,450 signatures, and Stambaugh's lawyer, Lake Perriguey, has fielded calls from national newspapers and television programs. Although student teachers are not covered under the same legal protections as their full-time counterparts, Perriguey thinks Stambaugh's case has merit because the school never had a policy forbidding teachers from discussing marital status, and straight teachers were never disciplined for noting their marital status. SARAH MIRK [This article has been edited, see comment below]

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Portland government's largest labor group—the roughly 1,700-worker-strong District Council of Trade Unions—tentatively agreed to a new contract with the city last week. The deal, announced Wednesday, October 6, hands the city much of what it wanted: Caps on cost-of-living pay increases and certain overtime costs potentially worth millions. Union members, in turn, retained their benefits, added a holiday, and won new protections against the outsourcing of city work. Now, only two city unions remain without a contract: the Portland Police Association and the Portland Police Commanding Officers Association. DENIS C. THERIAULT