The United States Supreme Court granted cert. The Supreme Court's decision will have powerful implications for the right to be free from sexual harassment and sexual discrimination in schools. Under Title IX, women and girls are entitled to the fundamental guarantee of equal educational opportunity, free from sexual harassment. However, the goal of achieving equality of rights for women and girls cannot be attained if the school systems in which our children are taught allow sexual harassment to continue unabated or lack adequate policy guidelines for receiving and addressing sexual harassment complaints. Schools should be held liable for the sexual harassment aided by a teacher's actual or apparent authority.
Schoolteachers have a unique ability to exert power over their students.
With no way to voice their complaints in sexual harassment cases, students will remain victimized and silenced. Experience has shown that the adoption by schools of clear sexual harassment policies and adequate reporting procedures can reduce the incidence of sexual harassment. To encourage the development of policies and reporting procedures, schools should be deemed to have constructive knowledge of sexual harassment if they fail to establish anti-harassment policies and meaningful reporting procedures. Otherwise, schools will continue to ignore indicia of sexual harassment and allow it to proceed unchecked. The case requires the Supreme Court to determine what standard governs a school's responsibility for sexual harassment by its teachers.