School Districts Not Liable for Campus Violence, Court Says

School districts may not be held liable for campus violence under a 1982 anti-crime initiative, nor do they have a special duty under the measure to make schools safe, a state Court of Appeal ruled Wednesday.

The three-judge panel unanimously overturned a decision by an Alameda County trial judge--the first of its kind in California--that would have allowed parents to seek monetary damages against districts for failing to protect their children from harm.

The appellate panel found that the “safe schools” provision of Proposition 8, the “victims’ bill of rights,” provides only a “general” constitutional right to campus security and that any steps to enforce such a right must be implemented by state legislators.

“There is nothing in the (measure) to suggest that it was intended to create a civil action for damages or an affirmative duty to ensure that schools are free from all risk of crime and violence,” Appellate Justice Clinton W. White wrote for the court.

“The right proclaimed . . . although inalienable and mandatory, simply establishes the parameters of the principle enunciated; the specific means by which it is to be achieved for the people of California are left to the Legislature.”

Widely Watched Legal Test

The panel’s 15-page opinion came only a week after arguments in the widely watched legal test of a provision of the far-ranging initiative that guarantees students and school staff members the right to attend “safe, secure and peaceful” schools.

John P. MacMeeken of San Francisco, attorney for an Oakland woman suing local school authorities under the initiative, said he planned to appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court.

“I think the ruling is contrary to the law and does a disservice to the children of Oakland and all the children of the state,” MacMeeken said. “I’d be very disappointed if the Supreme Court doesn’t review this case. I don’t know anyone who’s not fed up with violence in our schools.”

Joseph Remcho of San Francisco, attorney for the defendant Oakland Unified School District, welcomed the ruling, saying that it correctly affirms that “school officials should be making decisions about school safety and how scarce dollars are spent, rather than judges imposing their own views of safety.”

The decision came in a suit brought in 1984 by Constance M. Hosemann of Oakland and her son Stephen R. Hosemann charging that school officials had failed to adequately protect the boy from being beaten, robbed and harassed by an older youth over a period of several years. In 1986, Alameda Superior Court Judge Richard Bartalini ruled that parents may sue school districts for damages under the initiative for failing to protect students from violence. Bartalini also ordered local officials to adopt a new security plan to combat crime on campus.

A group of 40 local school districts, including the Los Angeles Unified School District, and state Schools Supt. Bill Honig backed Oakland officials in urging the panel to overturn Bartalini’s decision. They warned that the ruling, if upheld, could force districts to take funds away from educational programs and spend them instead on security plans, insurance and legal fees.

Several law enforcement groups, education authorities and public officials joined the Hosemanns in arguing that the initiative’s safe-schools provision in itself provided the legal tools to achieve its goal. No further legislation was needed to establish a district’s potential liability for unsafe campuses or to allow judges to order new campus security programs, they said.

Must Comply

In Wednesday’s ruling, White, joined by Appellate Justices Betty Barry-Deal and Gary E. Strankman, agreed that all governmental agencies must comply with the initiative and are prohibited from “taking official actions which violate it or contravene its provisions.”

But the safe-schools declaration “merely indicates principles, without laying down rules” to implement those principles, White said.

The justice cited a ruling last year in another case by a state Court of Appeal in Sacramento that also found the initiative could not be used as the basis for a damage suit against school districts.

“We agree . . . that the (initiative) declares a general right without specifying any rules for its enforcement,” White said. “It imposes no express duty on anyone to make schools safe. It is wholly devoid of guidelines, mechanisms or procedures from which a damages remedy could be inferred.”