Schools Ruled Liable for Sex Harassment

Public schools and colleges whose officials ignore the severe sexual harassment of one student by another can be forced to pay damages to the victim, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The 5-4 decision opens a new chapter in sexual harassment law and puts school officials on notice that student-on-student harassment is their problem, too.

Schools need not, and cannot, stop all the teasing, name-calling and roughhousing that are common in groups of children, the justices said. But if a student is repeatedly grabbed and taunted by another and if officials are made aware of it and refuse to intervene, the school can be held liable, the justices said.

The ruling revives a lawsuit filed on behalf of a Georgia schoolgirl whose fifth-grade classmate repeatedly grabbed her breasts, rubbed up against her and made vulgar comments. For five months, the girl complained to her teacher, who refused even to separate the boy from her. Her mother came to school to complain to both the teacher and the principal. Yet nothing was done.

Two lower courts had dismissed her claim before trial.

On Monday, however, the Supreme Court ruled that if these allegations are true, the school system violated the girl’s right to get an education free from sex discrimination. The decision opens the way for the case to be tried in lower courts.

The ruling extends Title IX, the landmark 1972 law that prohibits sex discrimination by schools and colleges that receive federal funds.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, speaking for the majority, stressed that successful lawsuits in such cases will be rare. The key issue, she said, is whether school officials knew about the harassment and chose to do nothing.

Last year, the high court threw out a lawsuit against a Texas school district brought on behalf of a high school girl who had a secret affair with a teacher. The district could not be held liable then, O’Connor wrote for a conservative 5-4 majority, because its officials did not know of the affair. They may have been negligent in supervising the teacher, but that is not enough to hold the school liable, she said.

This time, however, O’Connor joined with the court’s liberals because the Georgia school officials were told directly about the boy’s crude harassment of LaShonda Davis, the alleged victim.

Schools can be held liable “only where they are deliberately indifferent to sexual harassment, of which they have actual knowledge, that is so severe, pervasive and objectively offensive that it can be said to deprive the victims of access to educational opportunities,” O’Connor wrote in the case (Davis vs. Monroe County Board of Education, 97-843). Her opinion was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Steven G. Breyer.

The four dissenters said they feared that the ruling would trigger “an avalanche of litigation” against schools. Four of five students in a 1993 survey said they had been targets of some type of sexual harassment, the dissenters noted. “The number of potential lawsuits against our schools is staggering,” said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who read much of his dissent from the bench.

Despite this worry, the National School Boards Assn., which represents the nation’s 15,000 school districts, applauded the ruling, as did women’s rights advocates and gay rights leaders.

California school officials also played down the prospect of mass litigation. In 1993, the state made sexual harassment grounds for the suspension or expulsion of students in grades four to 12. The next year, all California school districts were required to develop written policies on sexual harassment.

“California has been at work [on putting procedures in place] and is reaping results,” said Mary Jo McGrath, a Santa Barbara school attorney who also chairs a U.S. Education Department advisory panel on schools.

“We don’t think this means the floodgates of litigation are open,” added Doug Stone, a spokesman for the California Department of Education. “Schools shouldn’t ignore complaints about sexual harassment.”

The national school boards group had feared a ruling that would hold school districts liable for damages whenever their teachers or principals were negligent in not stopping harassment. They also were pleased that O’Connor’s opinion sets a high threshold for liability.

Anne Bryant, executive director of the association, said that the decision “protects children from sexual harassment by other children without putting the school district at an excessive financial risk.” She said that most schools have adopted strong policies against sexual harassment and, if they are followed, schools “should not be vulnerable to huge monetary damages.”

Six years ago, the group warned school officials that their districts could be held liable if they ignored complaints about “severe and repeated acts of sexual harassment by fellow students.” Two years ago, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights sent a similar warning to the nation’s schools.

“We can live with this standard,” said Julie Underwood, the general counsel for the school board group. “It will be rare if a school is held liable.”

The National Women’s Law Center, which represented the Georgia schoolgirl, called the ruling “a tremendous advance” because it “affirms schools’ legal obligation to provide a safe, harassment-free environment to their students.”

Harassment has long been a particular problem for gay and lesbian students. The Lambda Legal Defense Fund recently won a federal lawsuit against a Wisconsin school district that failed to protect a gay student from a beating at school.

Although Monday’s ruling did not specifically mention the rights of gay students in sexual harassment cases, Lambda officials said they believe its protections extend to gays as well.

“School officials who turn a deaf ear to complaints of serious harassment and violence” are now vulnerable to damage claims against their districts, said Beatrice Dohrn, Lambda’s legal director.

In California, school officials said they have been on notice that peer sexual harassment cannot be tolerated.

The Los Angeles Unified School District said that it has a comprehensive policy describing what is forbidden. It includes the use of derogatory or vulgar comments, displays of sexually suggestive cartoons or graffiti and unwanted touching or pinching.

Parents, students and employees are notified annually of the policy and are advised of how complaints should be filed and handled.

“First of all,” the policy advises, “treat all allegations . . . seriously and investigate them promptly.”

Deanne Neiman, director of the district’s educational equity compliance office, said that most problems crop up in middle schools. From July 1, 1998, until now, 537 students in the district have been suspended because of sexual harassment.

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Times staff writer Martha Groves in Los Angeles contributed to this story.