Search form broke my sort

[fwegan]

::waves:: Hey everybody, I'm new to PHP and MySQL. All I know is what I've learned over the last month while building a website for the small nonprofit where I work.

One page had a sortable list, but as soon as I made it searchable, the sorting broke. Each works fine on its own, just not together. I'm totally stumped, but it's probably something really easy and stupid that I'm just not seeing, right?

Sort stuff:
[code]
switch ($_POST['sort_by']) {
case "Name":
$sortby = "org_name";
break;
case "Location":
$sortby = "org_location";
break;
default:
$sortby = "org_name";
break;
}[/code]

Search stuff:
[code]$interests_search = $_GET['interests'];
$num_interests_search = count($interests_search);

for ($j = 0; $j < ($num_interests_search - 1); $j++) {
$search_term .= "(org_interests LIKE '%".strtolower($interests_search[$j])."%') OR ";
}
if ($j == ($num_interests_search -1)) {
$search_term .= "(org_interests LIKE '%".strtolower($interests_search[$j])."%')";
}
if ($search_term != "") {
$search_term .= " AND (inactive != 'true')";
}
[/code]

The select statement:
[code]if ($search_term == "") {
$sql = "SELECT * FROM members WHERE inactive != 'true' ORDER BY $sortby";
}
else {
$sql = "SELECT * FROM members WHERE $search_term ORDER BY $sortby";
}[/code]