Opinion ID: 2994082
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: analysis

Text: Apparently recognizing these fatal flaws of the Rowinsky opinion, the Eleventh Circuit in its en banc opinion in Davis took care not to characterize the issue as one of liability for the acts of third parties. It also did not echo the dictum that a plaintiff could only state a claim by showing differential treatment of complaints by boys and girls. The court properly recognized that the school’s allegedly discriminatory conduct lay in fail[ing] to take measures sufficient to prevent a non-employee from discriminating against [the plaintiff]. Davis, 120 F.3d at 1401. With this understanding, the court proceeded to analyze whether a school could properly face Title IX liability for such a failure. The Davis court began by finding that Title IX was enacted pursuant to the Spending Clause of the Constitution (art. I, sec. 8, cl. 1). See id. at 1398. From that premise, it next concluded that the proper inquiry to determine whether the school could be held liable was whether Congress gave the [school] Board unambiguous notice that it could be held liable for failing to stop [the] harassment. Id. at 1399. This Court held in Part I above that Congress enacted Title IX and applied it to the States pursuant to its powers under both the Spending Clause and Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. While the Eleventh Circuit’s approach is certainly relevant, it is not sufficient to conclude the inquiry. In its Spending Clause analysis, the Eleventh Circuit correctly observed that [w]hen Congress enacts legislation pursuant to the Spending Clause, it in effect offers to form a contract with potential recipients of federal funding. Id. (citing Pennhurst State Sch. & Hosp. v. Halderman, 451 U.S. 1, 17). As a general matter, the result of this contractual analogy is that if Congress intends to impose a condition on the grant of federal moneys, it must do so unambiguously. Pennhurst, 451 U.S. at 17. In light of this requirement, the Eleventh Circuit inquired whether the defendant school board had been unambiguously put on notice that it might be liable for failing to respond to sexual harassment that it knew was taking place. By relying upon the unambiguous statement rule of Pennhurst, the Eleventh Circuit ignored a more recent Supreme Court holding on the matter. In Franklin, 503 U.S. at 74-75, the Court held that where the discrimination alleged to have violated Title IX is intentional, the notice problem does not arise. See Davis, 120 F.3d at 1414 (Barkett, J., dissenting). Title IX, the Supreme Court held, placed on schools the duty not to discriminate on the basis of sex; when a school violated that duty, it could be held liable despite the fact that the Court had not previously imposed a similar remedy for the kind of Title IX violation at issue. See Franklin, 503 U.S. at 75 (holding monetary damages remedy against school district appropriate where school officials knew about teacher’s sexual harassment and abuse of student). In the case before the Court today, Jane Doe alleges that University High’s failure or refusal to take prompt and appropriate action in response to her complaints of sexual harassment was intentional sexual discrimination. In other words, the allegation assumes that the combination of knowledge that sexual harassment is occurring in activities under the school’s control and intentional failure to take prompt, appropriate action (such as investigation and, if warranted, disciplinary measures) is presumably, perhaps even necessarily, a manifestation of intentional sex discrimination. See Smith, 128 F.3d at 1028 (noting that a School District or School Board that ’knew’ and failed to respond to sex discrimination would act with the intent required to suffer a monetary judgment under the Spending Clause); id. at 1042 (Coffey, J., concurring) (same). After all, what other good reason could there possibly be for refusing even to make meaningful investigation of such complaints, as Jane Doe alleges University High officials did in this case? School and University officials were unquestionably aware that Title IX subjected the school to liability for intentionally discriminating against or denying educational benefits to students on the basis of sex. There is also no question that the campaign of harassment that Doe alleges was sufficient to deny her the full benefit of her education and subject her to discrimination at the school. If, as alleged, school and University officials knew about the harassment and intentionally failed, and indeed flatly refused in some instances, to take steps to address it, then the plea that the institution was not on notice that such failure could subject it to Title IX liability rings hollow. 2. Fourteenth Amendment Analysis Part I of this opinion held that Congress enacted Title IX and extended it to the States in part pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. In so holding, this Court concluded that the Supreme Court’s admonition in Pennhurst against quickly attribut[ing] to Congress an unstated intent to act under its authority to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment, Pennhurst, 451 U.S. at 16, was not pertinent to resolving the question under which of its powers Congress acted in passing and extending Title IX. The warning in Pennhurst is, however, most certainly relevant to the present inquiry, which is whether Title IX imposes upon recipients liability for certain types of actions or inactions. In Pennhurst, the Supreme Court declined to conclude that Congress, in passing the Developmentally Disabled Assistance and Bill of Rights Act, had intended to use its Section 5 powers to impose an obligation on States to provide and pay for certain kinds of treatment to the mentally disabled. Id. at 15-17. The Court noted that previous cases in which it had found that Congress did create rights and obligations pursuant to Section 5 involved express articulations of intent by Congress. Id. at 16. The Court further stated that [t]he case for inferring intent [to create enforceable rights] is at its weakest where . . . the rights asserted impose affirmative obligations on the States to fund certain services, since we may assume that Congress will not implicitly attempt to impose massive financial obligations on the States. Id. at 16-17. The Court contrasted such impositions of affirmative obligations with statutes that simply prohibit[] certain kinds of state conduct. Id. at 16; see Illinois Dep’t of Public Aid v. Sullivan, 919 F.2d 428, 434 (7th Cir. 1990) (finding that Pennhurst did not bar imposition of prohibitions on State, in part because [t]he regulations in question . . . imposed no new, affirmative obligations on [the State]). The right Jane Doe asserts in this case would impose no affirmative funding obligations on the States. It would merely prohibit States, in their capacity as administrators of educational programs receiving Title IX funds, from failing to respond to sexual harassment that they knew was occurring. Cf. Timmer v. Michigan Dep’t of Commerce, 104 F.3d 833, 840-841 (6th Cir. 1997) (inferring intent to enact Equal Pay Act pursuant to Fourteenth Amendment powers in part because it simply prohibit[s] certain kinds of state conduct, rather than imposing financial obligations). In any event, this Court does not read Pennhurst to stand for the proposition that Congress may never impose duties upon the States pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment in the absence of a clear, unambiguous statement that it is imposing those precise duties. Clarity in legislative drafting is a goal to which this Court willingly subscribes. Congress need not, however, spell out in advance every situation to which it wishes a statute to apply. As we observed nearly a decade and a half ago, the question of whether Congress created enforceable rights in the first instance is very different from questions concerning the scope and interpretation of those rights. American Hosp. Assoc. v. Schweiker, 721 F.2d 170, 183 (7th Cir. 1983) (upholding community service and uncompensated care requirements imposed on federally funded hospitals by Department of Health and Human Services regulations pursuant to Hill-Burton Act), certiorari denied, 466 U.S. 958. This Court noted in Schweiker that the defendant hospitals conceded that the statute created enforceable obligations; only the scope of the obligations was at issue. See id. Similarly, no party to the present case could seriously dispute that Title IX imposes obligations upon schools that receive federal funds to avoid discrimination on the basis of sex, or that students such as Jane Doe may sue to enforce those obligations. The issue is whether those obligations’ scope is wide enough to include the kind of liability Doe seeks to impose. Pennhurst is not a bar to inquiry into that question. If the language and history of Title IX and its extension to the States fairly support liability under the theory Jane Doe advances, then this Court may conclude that Congress acted pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to impose such liability. In its Spending Clause inquiry, the Eleventh Circuit looked primarily to the express terms and legislative history of Title IX. Finding no mention in the legislative history of student-on-student sexual harassment or the related issue of school discipline, Davis, 120 F.3d at 1397, the court concluded that schools were not on notice that they might be held liable for failing properly to address sexual harassment by students, id. at 1401./8 Although we have concluded herein that Title IX is not exclusively a Spending Clause enactment (and that the notice issue does not arise, given the intentional nature of the discrimination alleged), the Davis court’s analysis of whether the statute imposes liability provides a starting point for our Fourteenth Amendment inquiry. Unfortunately, the Eleventh Circuit made the mistake of focusing too narrowly on the statute and the legislative history, ignoring both case law and the meaning attached to Title IX by the federal agency responsible for its enforcement. As the dissenting judges in Davis observed, the language and legislative history of Title IX do not deal with teacher-on-student sexual harassment, any more than they do student-on-student harassment. See id. at 1413-1414 (Barkett, J., dissenting). Yet the Supreme Court has explicitly recognized that Title IX creates a cause of action based upon teacher-onstudent sexual harassment. See Franklin, 503 U.S. at 60. Indeed, the very principle that Title IX confers a private right of action for any sort of violation was not explicit in the text or legislative history; it became law only when the Supreme Court decided that Title IX implied such a right of action. See Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U.S. 677, 688-689; see also Franklin, 503 U.S. at 71 (noting that, given fact that right of action was inferred by Court in Cannon, prior legislative history and statutory text were not helpful in deciding whether money damages were available). This Court must, therefore, look to judicial decisions to help it determine whether Title IX imposes liability for the University’s failure to address appropriately sexual harassment by its students. The Supreme Court has declared that Title IX is to be given a sweep as broad as its language. North Haven Bd. of Educ. v. Bell, 456 U.S. 512, 521. That language, in turn, speaks in terms of safeguarding individual students’ rights: No person . . . shall be excluded . . . , be denied . . . benefits . . . , or be subjected to discrimination . . . . 20 U.S.C. sec. 1681. As the