Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 326.0

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Unit: $U87

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Cite as: 524 U. S. 274 (1998)

281

Opinion of the Court

ultimately the termination of federal funding.
§ 1682. The
Court held in Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U. S. 677
(1979), that Title IX is also enforceable through an implied
private right of action, a conclusion we do not revisit
here. We subsequently established in Franklin v. Gwinnett
County Public Schools, 503 U. S. 60 (1992), that monetary
damages are available in the implied private action.

In Franklin, a high school student alleged that a teacher
had sexually abused her on repeated occasions and that
teachers and school administrators knew about the har-
assment but took no action, even to the point of dissuading
her from initiating charges. See id., at 63–64. The lower
courts dismissed Franklin’s complaint against the school dis-
trict on the ground that the implied right of action under
Title IX, as a categorical matter, does not encompass recov-
ery in damages. We reversed the lower courts’ blanket rule,
concluding that Title IX supports a private action for dam-
ages, at least “in a case such as this, in which intentional
discrimination is alleged.” See id., at 74–75. Franklin
thereby establishes that a school district can be held liable
in damages in cases involving a teacher’s sexual harassment
of a student; the decision, however, does not purport to de-
ﬁne the contours of that liability.

We face that issue squarely in this case. Petitioners,
joined by the United States as amicus curiae, would invoke
standards used by the Courts of Appeals in Title VII cases
involving a supervisor’s sexual harassment of an employee
In support of that approach, they point to
in the workplace.
a passage in Franklin in which we stated: “Unquestionably,
Title IX placed on the Gwinnett County Public Schools the
duty not to discriminate on the basis of sex, and ‘when a
supervisor sexually harasses a subordinate because of the
subordinate’s sex, that supervisor “discriminate[s]” on the
basis of sex.’ Meritor Sav. Bank, FSB v. Vinson, 477 U. S.
57, 64 (1986). We believe the same rule should apply when a
Id., at 75.
teacher sexually harasses and abuses a student.”