Opinion ID: 202765
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Motion for Directed Judgment

Text: 12 We review the denial of a Rule 50 motion de novo. Walton v. Nalco Chem. Co., 272 F.3d 13, 23 (1st Cir. 2001). We must affirm unless the evidence was `so strongly and overwhelmingly' inconsistent with the verdicts that no reasonable jury could have returned them. Id. (quoting Negrón v. Caleb Brett U.S.A., Inc., 212 F.3d 666, 668 (1st Cir. 2000)). Thus, to reverse, we must find that there was a total failure of evidence to prove plaintiff's case. Mayo v. Schooner Capital Corp., 825 F.2d 566, 568 (1st Cir. 1987) (quoting Fact Concerts, Inc. v. City of Newport, 626 F.2d 1060, 1064 (1st Cir. 1980)) (internal quotation marks omitted). We draw all reasonable inferences from the evidence presented at trial in favor of the prevailing party. Negrón, 212 F.3d at 668. 13 Under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a recipient of funding from the United States Department of Education may be liable for damages if its deliberate indifference [to peer-on-peer sexual harassment] `subjects' its students to harassment. Davis v. Monroe County Bd. of Educ., 526 U.S. 629, 644, 119 S.Ct. 1661, 143 L.Ed.2d 839 (1999). A funding recipient is deliberately indifferent to student-on-student harassment when the recipient's response to the harassment or lack thereof is clearly unreasonable in light of the known circumstances. Id. at 648, 119 S.Ct. 1661. [T]he deliberate indifference must, at a minimum, `cause [students] to undergo' harassment or `make them liable or vulnerable' to it. Id. at 645, 119 S.Ct. 1661 (alteration in original) (quoting Random House Dictionary of the English Language 1415 (1966)). In addition, the acts of sexual harassment must be known to the funding recipient. Id. at 647, 119 S.Ct. 1661. Finally, the harassment must be so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it can be said to deprive the victims of access to the educational opportunities or benefits provided by the school. Id. at 650, 119 S.Ct. 1661. 14 Thus, a funding recipient is not liable under Title IX for all student-on-student sexual harassment. First, the plaintiff must show (1) that he or she was subject to severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive sexual harassment by a school peer, and (2) that the harassment caused the plaintiff to be deprived of educational opportunities or benefits. Even then, Davis restricts a funding recipient's liability under Title IX for student-on-student sexual harassment to situations where (3) it knew of the harassment, (4) in its programs or activities and (5) it was deliberately indifferent to the harassment such that its response (or lack thereof) is clearly unreasonable in light of the known circumstances. 15 For the purposes of this appeal, we assume (without deciding) that SC was subject to severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive harassment by RC, that Tewksbury is a funding recipient and had actual knowledge in 2001 of at least some prior incidents of inappropriate sexual behavior, and that the harassment deprived SC of educational opportunities or benefits. 4 Even making these assumptions, we do not think that the Portos presented sufficient evidence such that a rational jury could have concluded that Tewksbury was deliberately indifferent to the harassment of SC. The Portos argue that Tewksbury was told on multiple occasions that RC was harassing SC, but that the school did nothing more than temporarily separate the boys. The Portos also note that in spite of Tewksbury's knowledge of the prior sexual harassment, RC and SC were allowed to have unsupervised access to each other at times. The Portos contend that, given the history of sexual harassment between RC and SC that culminated in the school-bus incident in fifth grade, Tewksbury should have not allowed SC to go to his locker alone while RC was in the bathroom. The Portos point to evidence of a prior directive from Tewksbury to teachers and aides that RC and SC not be allowed to travel alone together in or outside the school building. 16 The problem with the Portos' argument is that it suggests only that Tewksbury perhaps should have done more to prevent RC from sexually harassing SC. However, a claim that the school system could or should have done more is insufficient to establish deliberate indifference; in the Title IX context, funding recipients are deemed deliberately indifferent to acts of student-on-student harassment only where the recipient's response to the harassment or lack thereof is clearly unreasonable in light of the known circumstances. Davis, 526 U.S. at 648, 119 S.Ct. 1661. The Supreme Court has described deliberate indifference as a stringent standard of fault, requiring proof that a municipal actor disregarded a known or obvious consequence of his action or inaction. Bd. of the County Comm'rs v. Brown, 520 U.S. 397, 410, 117 S.Ct. 1382, 137 L.Ed.2d 626 (1997) (emphasis added). Thus, before holding a municipality liable for a police officer's excessive force, we have required plaintiffs to prove that the municipality knew that the excessive force would be a plainly obvious consequence of hiring the officer. Crete v. City of Lowell, 418 F.3d 54, 66 (1st Cir. 2005); see also Young v. City of Providence, 404 F.3d 4, 28 (1st Cir. 2005) (holding that a reasonable jury could find deliberate indifference where excessive force was a highly predictable consequence of the municipality's failure to train its police officers) (quoting Brown, 520 U.S. at 409, 117 S.Ct. 1382). Likewise, in Bisbal-Ramos v. City of Mayagüez, we found that the evidence was sufficient to support a finding of deliberate indifference by a supervisor where a municipal employee turned city hall into the campaign headquarters for a candidate, with the obvious consequence that employees who were supporters of the rival candidate would feel that they had been discriminated against in violation of their First Amendment rights. 467 F.3d 16, 25 (1st Cir. 2006). In the educational setting, we have suggested that a school might be deliberately indifferent to a teacher's sexual harassment of a student where it had notice of the sexual harassment, and either did nothing or failed to take additional reasonable measures after it learned that its initial remedies were ineffective. Wills v. Brown Univ., 184 F.3d 20, 26 (1st Cir. 1999). 17 The Portos do not claim that Tewksbury did nothing to address RC's sexual harassment of SC. They acknowledge that Tewksbury separated SC and RC after each episode of sexual harassment and later had the school guidance counselor intervene. Compare with Doe ex rel. A.N. v. E. Haven Bd. of Educ., 200 Fed.Appx. 46, 49 (2d Cir. 2006) (unpublished) (finding deliberate indifference where alleged victim of a rape complained of verbal harassment based on her sex and related to the rape for five weeks before authorities took concrete action to get the perpetrators of the harassment to stop). Rather, the Portos claim that these measures were ineffective. There is no doubt that the bathroom incident is evidence that RC's inappropriate sexual behavior was not abated. However, the fact that measures designed to stop harassment prove later to be ineffective does not establish that the steps taken were clearly unreasonable in light of the circumstances known by Tewksbury at the time. The test for whether a school should be liable under Title IX for student-on-student harassment is not one of effectiveness by hindsight. 18 The Portos' proof is inadequate on several different levels. First, there was no evidence presented at trial to suggest that Tewksbury knew or even suspected that when SC asked to go to his locker, he was really going to go to the bathroom to meet RC. The Portos suggest that because SC was mentally disabled, it would have been prudent to have had a teacher's aide accompany him to his locker. However, this suggests only that Tewksbury may have been negligent; to prove deliberate indifference, the Portos had to show at least that Tewksbury knew that the failure to accompany SC to his locker would lead to SC following RC to the bathroom and that there was a high degree of risk that SC would be subject there to inappropriate sexual behavior by RC. Edelstein offered uncontradicted testimony that the boys had never given a reason for [her] to ever question that they couldn't be trusted going to the bathroom or going to a locker, and that she trusted that they would follow the rules. Thus, there was no evidence that anyone had a reason to suspect that SC intended to deceive Edelstein when he asked for permission to visit his locker. 19 Furthermore, there was no evidence that the school knew or that it was obvious that RC would continue to sexually harass SC after October 2000. To put the Portos' claim in context, it is important to note that between March 1999 and October 2000, there was only one alleged minor incident of sexual harassment. Apart from this, according to Ann Marie Porto, SC was generally happy at school and had no problems, and there was no evidence that Tewksbury was aware of any additional problems during this time. It was not until October 2000 that RC's inappropriate touching resumed. The first two times this occurred, the school separated the boys. After the third instance of inappropriate touching, school officials sent the boys to talk to Traveis, the school counselor. RC and SC spoke with Traveis, who testified that it was his understanding that the boys knew that what they were doing was wrong, and that they promised not to do it again. It was reasonable for Tewksbury to conclude that this intervention worked: there was no evidence presented that Tewksbury was aware of any further sexual harassment by RC between Traveis's intervention in October 2000 and the January 11, 2001 incident. 5 Even the Portos' expert, Dr. Dragan, testified only that Tewksbury could have done more. Thus, there was no evidence from which it could be inferred that Tewksbury had reason to believe that RC was continuing to sexually harass SC. In other words, further sexual harassment, much less sexual intercourse, was not a known or obvious consequence of Tewksbury's failure to accompany SC to his locker on January 11, 2001. 6 20 Therefore, this is not a case, as the Portos contend, where a school continued to use the same ineffective methods to no acknowledged avail. Vance v. Spencer County Pub. Sch. Dist., 231 F.3d 253, 262 (6th Cir. 2000). By all indications, Tewksbury's methods were working: until January 11, 2001, Tewksbury was not aware that RC had been engaging in any further sexual harassment after October 2000. Nor is this case analogous to Williams v. Board of Regents, 477 F.3d 1282 (11th Cir. 2007), where the Eleventh Circuit found that the plaintiff had adequately alleged that University of Georgia was deliberately indifferent when it failed to properly instruct or supervise a student athlete who had recently been accused of sexual harassment while attending another institution. In Williams, prior to attending the University of Georgia, a student athlete had been disciplined by two colleges for sexual assault and sexual harassment. Id. at 1290. Thus, recent history suggested that the interventions by the student's former schools—dismissal of the student from one school and dismissal from the other's basketball team—had not been successful in curbing the student's inappropriate sexual behavior. Based on her claims that the defendants failed to properly instruct or supervise the student to make sure that he did not sexually assault persons affiliated with the university, the plaintiff adequately alleged that the defendants exhibited deliberate indifference to an obvious consequence of their inaction, i.e., another sexual assault. Id. at 1296. In the present case, the evidence clearly shows that after Traveis's intervention, Tewksbury reasonably believed that it had been successful in stopping RC's inappropriate behavior. Because continued sexual harassment was not a known or obvious consequence of the school's inaction as in Vance and Williams, Tewksbury cannot have been deliberately indifferent to SC's plight. 21 More analogous to the situation in this case is Gabrielle M. v. Park Forest-Chicago Heights, Illinois School District 163, 315 F.3d 817 (7th Cir. 2003). In Gabrielle M., school officials initially suspended a boy who had been sexually harassing female classmates. Id. at 819. After the boy returned to school, administrators eventually allowed the boy to return to lunchtime and recess with the classmates, but asked aides to keep an eye on him. Id. at 819-20. The Seventh Circuit held that this was not an unreasonable response to the known risk that the boy might harass his classmates again: Davis [ v. Monroe County Board of Education, 526 U.S. 629, 119 S.Ct. 1661, 143 L.Ed.2d 839 (1999)] does not require funding recipients to remedy peer harassment. Davis disapproved of a standard that would force funding recipients to suspend or expel every student accused of misconduct. All that Davis requires is that the school not act clearly unreasonably in response to known instances of harassment. Here, in light of each of the immediate disciplinary and preventative steps the school district had already taken in response to Jason's conduct, including most prominently the decisions to move him to another class entirely and eventually to grant Gabrielle's request for a school transfer, it was not clearly unreasonable as a matter of law initially to assign an instructor to oversee a communal recess and lunch period instead of immediately rescheduling the lunch and recess period for a whole kindergarten class. 22 Id. at 825 (internal citations omitted). Likewise, Tewksbury acted reasonably in responding to RC's inappropriate touching by separating RC and SC and sending them to the guidance counselor. Thus, drawing all inferences favorable to the Portos, the evidence in this case overwhelmingly fails, as a matter of law, to demonstrate that Tewksbury acted with deliberate indifference in failing to address RC's sexual harassment of SC. Therefore, the Portos cannot prevail on their claim, and the district judge should have granted Tewksbury's motion for a directed verdict. 7