Court Urged to Hold Schools Liable for Violence on Campus

In a widely watched test of the 1982 anti-crime initiative, an openly skeptical state Court of Appeal was asked Wednesday to rule that school districts may be held financially liable for failing to protect students from campus violence.

An attorney for an Oakland woman and her son urged the panel to uphold a trial judge’s novel 1986 decision permitting parents to sue for damages and requiring local officials to adopt a new security plan under the “safe schools” section of Proposition 8, known as the Victims’ Bill of Rights.

“Proposition 8 clearly represents a decision by the public to do something about violence in our society,” said the lawyer, John P. MacMeeken of San Francisco. “Everyone knows that fear lurks in the halls of our schools.”

But MacMeeken ran into an unusually blunt barrage of criticism from presiding Appellate Justice Clinton W. White, who raised grave doubt about the validity of the 1986 ruling and voiced alarm about its potential impact.

‘Flood of Lawsuits’

“What you’re saying is that parents can bankrupt all the schools in a flood of lawsuits,” White said. “I can see well-to-do parents suing school boards because their daughter . . . committed suicide as the result of drugs she got on campus.”

The justice went on to note that the Oakland district has already been forced to cut back its teaching and administrative staff. “Why?” he asked. “Because there’s no money.”

The panel heard arguments in a case that has drawn substantial interest among California school officials. Bill Honig, state schools superintendent, and about 40 local districts, including the Los Angeles Unified School District, have joined Oakland officials in contesting the 1986 ruling. Several law enforcement groups, education authorities and public officials have joined the plaintiffs in the suit urging that the decision be upheld.

Proposition 8 contained a broad range of provisions dealing with crime and the criminal justice system. While most of the initiative has been reviewed and upheld in court, there has been no definitive ruling on the meaning of a section giving students and staff an “inalienable right” to attend “safe, secure and peaceful” schools.

In the case before the court, Constance M. Hosemann brought suit in 1984 on behalf of her son, Stephen, then an Oakland high school student, charging that school authorities failed to protect the youth from being robbed, beaten and harassed over a period of years by an older student. The mother asked that the assailant be barred from her son’s school.

Oakland officials responded that they had taken a number of steps to protect the boy--including providing him with a special parking place with quick access to a telephone--and had temporarily suspended the other youth, who eventually spent time in a correctional camp.

At trial, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Richard Bartalini held that under the 1982 initiative, the Hosemanns could seek monetary damages against the district for failing to protect the boy. Bartalini also held that the district must implement “comprehensive and strategic plans” to enforce the initiative’s guarantee of safe schools.

The judge told districts officials to take specific steps to enhance school security and report back to him. Later, the ruling was stayed pending appeal by the district.

In their appeal, lawyers for the district and their supporters argued that Proposition 8 in itself was only a “call for action” on school safety by the Legislature and was not meant to create a new right to sue. Nor, said the attorneys, did the initiative give judges sweeping authority to order districts to devise safety plans.

Honig assailed the case as “ideological” in nature, saying it was an improper attempt to use a lawsuit to impose new educational policies on school districts. Bartalini’s decision, the superintendent said, was “astounding” and “patently overbroad.”

Honig also accused backers of the suit of “wildly exaggerating” the problem of crime and violence in California’s 7,384 public schools. The number of reported criminal incidents declined from 162,733 in 1985-86 to 157,597 the next year, he said.

The Hosemanns and their supporters argued that the voters who overwhelmingly passed the initiative intended to reduce crime and violence on the campus and that no further action by the Legislature was required.

The fact that safety precautions might impose financial hardships is no reason to deny the newly enacted constitutional right to secure campuses, they said.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Joseph Remcho of San Francisco, the attorney for the Oakland district, argued that Judge Bartalini’s ruling should be overturned.

The judge’s finding of a right to sue and his assertion of authority over school security, Remcho said, “obviously was simply beyond anything contemplated in the initiative.”

MacMeeken, the Hosemanns’ attorney, encountered a series of skeptical questions from the panel, particularly White, who several times voiced doubts about Bartalini’s authority to issue such a ruling.

But MacMeeken defended Bartalini’s order as a valid response to the district’s refusal to acknowledge a legal duty under the initiative to take affirmative steps to increase security.