Impeachment Won’t Slow Busy High Court

The Supreme Court this week begins one of its busiest sessions of the year, including arguments on whether schools can be held liable for student-on-student sexual harassment and whether California can offer lower welfare benefits to newcomers.

The justices will also consider whether police who make traffic stops can search the purses and briefcases of passengers in the car. And in a North Carolina case that could set the rules for drawing electoral boundaries for the next decade, the court will consider whether race can ever be used as a factor in redistricting.

Today, the court will act on several hundred appeals; the justices will issue written rulings Tuesday and perhaps Wednesday as well. In other words, it will be business as usual at the high court, despite the impeachment turmoil swirling around Congress and the White House.

The court’s marble palace sits just across First Street from the Senate wing of the Capitol. Despite the proximity, the court has always prided itself on being separate and removed from the political hubbub of Washington.

It maintains a distinctively formal and old-fashioned aura. No TV cameras and photographers are allowed inside. No lobbyists roam the halls. There are no press conferences, no briefers and spinners, no “unnamed sources” with inside information. The justices themselves are rarely seen on the lower levels of the building that are open to the public.

Of course, the court’s separate world will be punctured in one obvious way by the impeachment trial. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist will preside over the Senate trial, no matter how long it takes.

But what is remarkable is not how much a grand and gripping impeachment trial will affect the court but rather how little. Rehnquist made clear that he plans to be in the courtroom during the mornings when oral arguments are held. After lunch, he will go across to the Senate for the trial. As a result, the court’s work is expected to proceed entirely unaffected by his temporary absence in the afternoons.

Oral arguments are scheduled for this morning and Tuesday and Wednesday mornings and again on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. On Jan. 25, after issuing rulings, the court goes on a three-week recess, in which no public sessions are scheduled.

Normally, the justices use that time to write opinions or take a vacation--or both. If the impeachment trial begins in earnest in late January or early February, the chief justice may be heavily occupied while his colleagues leave town for speaking trips or ski vacations.

Early in the week, the court’s schedule will demand the attention of all nine justices.

The case brought by the mother of a Georgia schoolgirl could affect millions of students nationwide.

In late June, the court ruled employers are generally liable if a worker is harassed on the job by a supervising employee, regardless of whether company officials knew of the abuse.

But in a 5-4 ruling in late June, the justices said a school district cannot be forced to pay damages to a student who had a secret sexual affair with a teacher. That ruling did not give schools a blanket shield of immunity, however.

In her opinion, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said schools can be held liable for persistent sexual harassment of students only when an official “has actual knowledge of the discrimination” and does nothing to stop it.

Women’s rights leaders say that describes the case of LaShonda Davis. As a fifth-grader, she was repeatedly grabbed and taunted by an aggressive boy. He made vulgar comments and said he would grab her breasts whenever he got a chance. Three times, her mother complained to the teacher. She followed up with several visits to the principal, who reportedly asked why she was always complaining about the boy.

School officials refused even to move the boy away from LaShonda in class. The girl, distraught, wrote a suicide note.

At year’s end, Aurelia Davis, the mother, filed a suit against the school district under Title IX of the federal education code. It says: “No person shall, on the basis of sex, be subjected to discrimination” in any school or college receiving federal funds.

A federal judge threw out her suit before trial, and the U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta agreed, on a 7-4 vote, that the law does not cover student-on-student harassment.

But the National Women’s Law Center and the Clinton administration argue that the law was intended to protect students from severe sexual harassment at school, regardless of the perpetrator. On Tuesday morning, the court will hear the arguments in Davis vs. Monroe County Board of Education, 97-843.

Meanwhile, the California welfare case is making a return trip to the court.

In 1992, state lawmakers voted to lower welfare benefits for new residents for their first year in California. During this time, they would receive the benefits paid in the state they had left.

But the law never took effect. A federal judge in Sacramento struck it down as unconstitutional, and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, ruling the state may not discriminate between old and new residents.

The high court agreed to hear the state’s appeal but then dismissed the case in 1995 when the Clinton administration refused to give California a waiver to alter its welfare benefits. A year later, however, Congress revised the entire welfare law and gave the states freedom to try out new benefit plans.

Nonetheless, the 9th Circuit ruled again that the two-tiered system is unconstitutional. A suit had been filed on behalf of a woman named “Brenda Roe,” who moved to Long Beach from Oklahoma. As a Californian, she was entitled to $565 per month. But under the disputed law, she would have been limited to $307, the benefit she would have received in Oklahoma.

The justices agreed last fall to hear the state’s appeal in Anderson vs. Roe, and arguments will be heard Wednesday morning.