Student-on-Student Sexual Harassment
Vance v. Spencer County Public School District, 231 F.3d 253 (6th Cir. 2000)
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed a $220,000 jury award to a female public school student for student-on-student sexual harassment.
Alma McGowan was a student in the Spencer School District, Louisville, Kentucky. From 1992 to 1995 her classmates regularly subjected her to physical and verbal harassment of a sexual nature. Besides enduring sexual proposals and being fondled, she was physically assaulted on at least two occasions and threatened with her life on another. For three years she and her mother complained orally and in writing to teachers and school administrators. School administrators repeatedly talked with the harassers about their conduct, but they were never disciplined. The harassment worsened. In May 1995 pursuant to the district’s sexual harassment policy McGowan filed a Title IX complaint with the district. The district allowed her to finish her school year at home, but never investigated her complaint. In August 1995 McGowan withdrew from school. The following summer she filed suit under Title IX alleging that Spencer School District discriminated against her by subjecting her to “intentional sexual discrimination as a result of peer conduct.”
In her claim against the school district, McGowan successfully demonstrated to a jury that the sexual harassment she experienced was 1) so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it deprived her of an education; 2) that school officials knew of the harassment; and 3) that school officials were deliberately indifferent to the harassment by failing to act reasonably under the known circumstances. Affirming the jury’s decision to award damages, the Sixth Circuit noted that “[w]here a school district has actual knowledge that its efforts to remediate are ineffective, and it continues to use those same methods to no avail, such district has failed to act reasonably in light of the circumstances.”
Davis v. Monroe Co. Bd. of Educ., 526 U.S. 629 (2000):
In a case brought under Title IX, the United States Supreme Court held (5-4) that a school district may be held financially liable in a case of student-on-student sexual harassment if district officials knew about the conduct and remained deliberately indifferent to it. The alleged harassing conduct must be of such a "severe, pervasive and objectively offensive" nature that it precludes the targeted student from receiving the benefits of an education. The "deliberate indifference" standard is the same standard the court applied in Gebser v. Lago Independent Sch. Dist., 118 S.Ct. (1989) when it held that a school district could be held financially liable for sexual harassment of a student by a teacher.
Other recent cases of interest:
Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, 523 U.S. 75 (1998)
(held that workplace harassment involving members of the same sex can be actionable under Title VII), 523 U.S. 75 (1998) (held that workplace harassment involving members of the same sex can be actionable under Title VII)