The Detroit Free Press reports that a federal jury awarded damages of $800,000 to a student who suffered peer-on-peer harassment at Hudson Area Schools. Further investigation unveiled the plaintiff's complaint, as well as the jury verdict form, filed March 3, 2010.
The plaintiff, a child of David and Dena Patterson identified as “DP,” started to experience bullying as a sixth grader. During sixth and seventh grade, students routinely called DP names such as “queer,” “faggot,” “pig” and “Mr. Clean.” DP estimated he was called such names on over 200 occasions in seventh grade. Students also pushed DP into lockers in the hallway. As DP continued through the school system, he continued to endure attacks of increasing intensity. Students broke into DP’s locker and urinated on his clothing, threw his shoes in the toilet, and mocked DP in class.
The Hudson Area Schools responded to these attacks largely by verbal warnings, which worked to some extent, ending further misconduct by the punished students. However, despite such success, other students were always there to pick up the harassment in place of the previously-reprimanded students. As a result, DP endured systematic harassment from his peers from sixth through ninth grade.
Finally, at the end of DP’s 9th grade year, the situation hit its breaking point. Following a Friday night JV baseball practice, DP’s teammates blocked him into a corner in the locker room while another teammate stripped naked, jumped on DP, and rubbed his genitalia in DP’s face. The teammate was expelled for the few days left in the school year, but just a week later was permitted to attend a school sports banquet.
DP’s parents filed suit on his behalf, alleging a variety of state and federal law claims, including violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, 20 U.S.C. § 1681. While Title IX is well known for its role in ensuring gender equality in athletics, its mandate is not so limited. Title IX provides that no person shall be, “on the basis of sex. . . subjected to discrimination under any education program receiving Federal financial assistance.” Under Title IX jurisprudence, educational institutions receiving federal funding may be held liable for peer-on-peer sexual harassment where:
(1) the sexual harassment was so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively barred the student’s access to an educational opportunity or benefit;
(2) the institution had actual knowledge of the sexual harassment; and
(3) the funding recipient acted with deliberate indifference to known acts of harassment.
Initially, the trial court dismissed DP’s Title IX claim for failure to satisfy the third element: deliberate indifference. However, in January 2009, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, remanding the case back to the district court for trial.
In the order reinstating DP’s Title IX claim, the Sixth Circuit emphasized that “even though a school district takes some action in response to known harassment, if further harassment continues, a jury is not precluded by law from finding that the school district’s response is clearly unreasonable.” The Sixth Circuit rejected the school’s argument that its reprimands to individual students were effective as to those perpetrators. “Hudson’s success with individual students did not prevent the overall and continuing harassment of DP, a fact of which Hudson was fully aware, and thus Hudson’s isolated success with individual perpetrators cannot shield Hudson from liability as a matter of law.”
It was the Sixth Circuit’s reversal last year which sent DP’s lawsuit back on course for trial, setting the stage for this week’s determination by a Michigan jury that the Hudson Area Schools violated Title IX, and awarding DP $800,000 in damages. An appeal may follow.
As we await further proceedings in this matter, schools should heed the warning from the Sixth Circuit in the prior appeal: where a school has knowledge that its methods for dealing with peer-on-peer harassment are not effective in curtailing the overall harassment, they may not simply continue to employ those methods, but must seek out a new solution to end the harassment.
