Opinion ID: 6342251
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: “Before” Theory

Text: First, as this court recently explained, Kollartisch “addressed a question that divided our sister circuits following Davis—what is required to find that a school has ‘subjected’ a student to discrimination?” Wamer v. Univ. of Toledo, 27 F.4th 461, 466 (6th Cir. 2022). And, departing from the First, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits’ interpretation, Kollaritsch instead read Davis as “introduc[ing] a causation element requiring additional post-notice harassment in deliberate indifference claims alleging student-on-student harassment.” Id. That is, we acknowledged that Kollaritsch rejected those other circuits’ interpretation of Davis, which only require students to demonstrate “that a school’s deliberate indifference made harassment more likely, not that it actually led to any additional post-notice incidences of harassment.” Id. at 467 (citing Farmer v. Kansas State Univ., 918 F.3d 1094, 1103-05 (10th Cir. 2019); Fitzgerald v. Barnstable Sch. Comm., 504 F.3d 165, 172-73 (1st Cir. 2007), rev’d on other grounds, 555 U.S. 246 (2009); and Williams v. Bd. of Regents of Univ. Sys. of Ga., 477 F.3d 1282, 1297-98 (11th Cir. 2007)). Nos. 20-6225/6228 Doe, et al. v. Metro. Gov’t of Nashville & Davidson Cnty. Page 16 In other words, Kollaritsch rejected the very authority that would leave open the possibility of Title IX liability under a “before” theory.2 Second, any doubt on that score is dispelled by Kollaritsch itself. There, we expressly rejected the argument “that the isolated phrase make them vulnerable means that post-actualknowledge further harassment is not necessary” because it would be a “misreading of Davis as a whole and the causation requirement in particular.” Kollartisch, 944 F.3d at 622, 623. Instead, Kollaritsch explained that Davis’s two-part causation statement gives “two possible ways that a school’s ‘clearly unreasonable’ response could lead to further harassment: that response might (1) be a detrimental action, thus fomenting or instigating further harassment, or it might (2) be an insufficient action (or no action at all), thus making the victim vulnerable to, meaning unprotected from, further harassment.” Id. at 623; see also id. at 623 (further harassment could occur by “commission (directly causing further harassment) [or] omission (creating vulnerability that leads to further harassment)” (citation omitted)). Moreover, Kollaritsch also specifically rejected the argument that “a single, sufficiently severe sexual assault is enough to state a viable action.” Id. Nor can Kollaritsch be side-stepped on the grounds of “the very different context and facts of this case.” (Maj. Op. 6.) As the district court aptly noted: “‘Before’ claims and ‘after’ claims are, for statutory purposes, all just Title IX claims, subject to the applicable Title IX jurisprudence.” (PageID 445.) And, “Kollaritsch’s central holding does implicate ‘before’ claims, albeit by unavoidable implication.” (PageID 446.) The district court’s reasoning is worth repeating: A “before” claim, by definition, only satisfies the first element and cannot satisfy the second and fourth elements [articulated in Kollaritsch] without becoming an “after” claim. Moreover, the court in Kollaritsch was unambiguous that a claim cannot be premised on a school’s failure to address risk of sexual harassment based on past incidents of harassment against students other than the plaintiff. 944 F.3d at 621-22. The type of hypothetical claim rejected—a claim based on a 2 Although the Kollaritsch majority did not mention these cases by name, it explained that “plaintiffs cite several cases that rely on their same misreading of Davis to support that same inapt logical argument. But none of those cases is controlling. And, because we find none of them persuasive, we decline to address them specifically or discuss them here.” 944 F.3d at 623. This court was not mistaken to recognize as much in Wamer. Nos. 20-6225/6228 Doe, et al. v. Metro. Gov’t of Nashville & Davidson Cnty. Page 17 school’s failure to protect the plaintiff from risks apparent from prior misconduct directed at other students—is simply a description of what a “before” claim is. (PageID 446.) (Emphasis added.) In other words, Kollaritsch precludes the plaintiffs’ “before” claims “because such claims are categorically incapable of satisfying its requirements.” (PageID 447.) Third, the majority opinion misleadingly points to a statement in Davis as supporting its conclusion that it would “thwart” Title IX’s broad remedial purposes to allow “schools to remain deliberately indifferent to widespread discrimination as long as the same student was not harassed twice.” (Maj. Op. 6.) Not only is this precisely what Kollaritsch requires, the actual passage from Davis does not support the proposition either. The Davis majority commented that even the dissent suggested liability may arise from deliberate indifference to “severe, genderbased mistreatment played out on a ‘widespread level’ among students.” Davis, 526 U.S. at 653. But the Davis dissent directly contradicted that characterization, explaining that it only meant that a pattern of discriminatory enforcement of a school’s own rules could be the basis of a Title IX action and rejecting the theory that “mere indifference to gender-based mistreatment—even if widespread—is enough to trigger Title IX liability.” Davis, 526 U.S. at 683 (Kennedy, J., dissenting). More importantly, the Davis majority made its assertion to bolster the conclusion that it was “unlikely that Congress would have thought” that “a single instance of sufficiently severe one-on-one peer harassment” was sufficient to have the “systemic effect of denying the victim equal access to an educational program or activity.” Davis, 526 U.S. at 652-53. Indeed, that conclusion is consistent with Kollaritsch’s understanding of Davis. Fourth, in adopting the Ninth Circuit’s recent articulation of a “before” or “pre-assault” claim in Karasek v. Regents of University of California, the majority opinion implies that the Eighth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits have adopted a similar test. A closer look, however, reveals that the Ninth Circuit’s decision is an outlier. For example, take the Eighth Circuit’s decision in K.T. v. Culver-Stockton College, which described Davis’s “actual knowledge” element as requiring prior notice of a substantial risk of peer harassment in the recipient’s programs based on evidence such as previous similar incidents of assault. 865 F.3d 1054, 1058 (8th Cir. 2017). While the allegations in K.T. were insufficient to state a claim, the court gave three examples Nos. 20-6225/6228 Doe, et al. v. Metro. Gov’t of Nashville & Davidson Cnty. Page 18 where actual knowledge could be established: (1) prior knowledge of “harassment previously committed by the same perpetrator” or “previous reports of sexual harassment occurring on the same premises,” id. (citing Ostrander v. Duggan, 341 F.3d 745, 750 (8th Cir. 2003)); (2) “actual knowledge that [the assailant] posed a substantial risk of sufficiently severe harm to students based on [the assailant’s] previous known conduct,” id. (quoting Thomas v. Bd. of Trustees of Neb. State Colls., 667 F. App’x 560, 562 (8th Cir. 2016)); and (3) where “school officials had actual knowledge of the discrimination in part because they recruited the student assailant despite having ‘preexisting knowledge’ of the student’s previous sexual misconduct,” id. at 1058-59 (citing Williams v. Bd. of Regents of the Univ. Sys. of Ga., 477 F.3d 1287, 1293-94 (11th Cir. 2007)). None of those situations are alleged here. As for the Tenth Circuit, its decision in Simpson v. University of Colorado rested entirely on an “official policy” theory under which policymakers would know to a moral certainty of the need to do something about the specific risk of sexual assault. 500 F.3d 1170, 1178-80 (10th Cir. 2007). Emphasizing that in Gebser and Davis “there was no element of encouragement of the misconduct by the school district,” the court in Simpson explained that “the gist of the complaint [was] that CU sanctioned, supported, even funded, a program (showing recruits a ‘good time’) that, without proper control, would encourage young men to engage in opprobrious acts.” Id. at 1177. Thus, even if we were free to look beyond Kollaritsch, the test articulated in Karasek hardly represents a consensus with respect to “before” theories of liability under Title IX. Finally, even in Karasek, the Ninth Circuit expressly declined to decide whether the allegations were sufficient and remanded with the additional caveat that “adequately alleging a causal link between a plaintiff’s harassment and a school’s deliberate indifference to sexual misconduct across campus is difficult.” 956 F.3d at 1114. The same is true here. The majority seems to suggest that evidence of MNPS’s indifference may be found in the summary of disciplinary actions, occurring over a four-year period, that reflect “over 950 instances of sexual harassment, over 1200 instances of inappropriate sexual behavior, 45 instances of sexual assault, and 218 instances of inappropriate sexual contact.” (PageID 4131.) What to make of those numbers, however, is less than clear. In terms of magnitude, MNPS is a particularly large district with an enrollment of nearly 80,000 students that operates more than a hundred schools, including twenty-some high schools. In terms of relevance, plaintiffs seem to recognize that the Nos. 20-6225/6228 Doe, et al. v. Metro. Gov’t of Nashville & Davidson Cnty. Page 19 numbers are both overinclusive and underinclusive. (PageID 4131.) And, even then, these are all incidents that resulted in disciplinary action, which is relevant to whether MNPS’s responses were “clearly unreasonable in light of the known circumstances.” Davis, 526 U.S. at 648. It will be for the district court to determine in the first instance whether there was an official policy of deliberate indifference, but, as in Karasek, the remand should go with the additional caveats that “[t]he element of causation ensures that Title IX liability remains within proper bounds” and that “Title IX does not require [a funding recipient] to purge its campus of sexual misconduct to avoid liability.” Karasek, 956 F.3d at 1114. I would affirm the district court’s rejection of the “before” theory as irreconcilable with Kollaritsch’s interpretation of Davis.