Opinion ID: 170152
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Deliberate Indifference After January 16, 2003

Text: The defendants concede, and the majority agrees, that the school district gained actual knowledge of the harassment on January 16, 2003. But the majority affirms the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendants on two grounds: first, that the district's response was not clearly unreasonable; second, that even if unreasonable, it did not cause K.C. any legal harm. I respectfully dissent on both points.
Promptly upon hearing K.C.'s account of the boys' treatment of her, the high school counselor contacted Jason Patrick, a police officer assigned to the school as a resource officer, to investigate the incidents. He promptly interviewed K.C. about the incidents, and then questioned many of K.C.'s friends as well as the boys involved. He prepared a 14-page written report, which was presented to the school principal. (K.C.'s mother was urged to read the report, but declined to do so.) The report confirmed many of the sexual acts and other misconduct about which K.C. complained. Officer Patrick also talked to the school principal some fifty times about the progress of the investigation. Based on Officer Patrick's report and those conversations, the principal became convinced that K.C. was sexually harassed by the boys. Officer Patrick also forwarded the report to District Attorney Bonnie Roesink, who decided not to file criminal charges. Ms. Roesink explained that the State would not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the activity . . . was not consensual. While unfortunate that these incidents occurred, I do not believe that we would be able to meet our burden of proof in a trial setting. Further, a trial would expos[e K.C.] to . . . tremendous trauma. App. 212. Upon learning that the harassment of K.C. would not be criminally prosecuted, the school district did nothing more. By the principal's own admission in deposition, neither the school nor the school district performed any additional investigation; the principal did not even speak with the boys regarding their misconduct; and none of the boys was disciplined in any way. The district's entire response to the sexual coercion and harassment that caused K.C. to leave school was to refer the issue to a police officer and then to do nothing when no charges were filed. The plaintiff complains both of the school district's failure to engage in its own investigation and of its response. I agree with the majority that the decision to rely on Officer Patrick to conduct the investigation was reasonable. He was a member of the school staff; he was apparently well-qualified to conduct an investigation into conduct that had evident criminal implications; his report appears thoroughand confirmatory of K.C.'s complaints; and he communicated frequently with the school principal as the investigation proceeded. Even if there might have been some better way to conduct the investigation (and plaintiff does not explain why any alternative would have been better), no reasonable jury could find the investigation a sign of deliberate indifference. The school district's inaction after receiving the report, however, was clearly unreasonable in light of the known circumstances. Davis, 526 U.S. at 648, 119 S.Ct. 1661. At this point, the school principal no longer had any doubt that the harassment had occurred and that it was predicated, at least in part, on sex, and therefore within the ambit of Title IX. Having read Officer Patrick's report, the principal knew of its frequency and severity. The principal knew the names of the boys involved. One of the malefactors had committed acts of sexual harassment at school before. Yet the school district did absolutely nothing. No discipline. No counseling. No communications with the boys' parents. The principal did not even call the perpetrators into his office for an admonitory chat. This cannot be a reasonable response. See Escue v. N. Okla. College, 450 F.3d 1146, 1155 (10th Cir.2006) ([A] minimalist response is not within the contemplation of a reasonable response. (internal quotation marks omitted)). It is a bit unclear why the majority concludes that this total inaction was reasonable under the circumstances. The majority first embraces the defendants' argument that discipline was not appropriate in this case since most of the incidents did not occur on school grounds, and the district reasonably could believe it did not have responsibility or control over the incidents. Maj. Op. 1123. Either the majority has set the bar for legal responsibility on the part of the school district too high as a matter of law or it has failed to view the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. The majority concedes, in a footnote, that it is not true that harassment occurring off school grounds cannot as a matter of law create liability under Title IX. Id. at 1121-22 n. 1. [2] But it makes no attempt to delineate the reach of the school district's potential liability in the context of this case, or determine whether the district's legal responsibility extends to some (even if not all) of the boys' misconduct. According to the Supreme Court, the proper inquiry is whether the school district exercises substantial control over both the harasser and the context in which the known harassment occurs. Davis, 526 U.S. at 645, 119 S.Ct. 1661. As of January, one of the boys, Nick Mangione, was enrolled in the high school. Steven Thomas, who was perhaps the most egregious offender, was enrolled in the high school but had not been attending since November, 2002, for reasons unknown to the school authorities. Thomas Barnes, a year younger, was still at the middle school but would attend the high school the following year. Alex Church never attended the high school; the record does not reflect whether he attended a school operated by the district. Although one of the reasons Principal Schmidt gave in his deposition for taking no disciplinary action was that [m]any of the situations after finding out did not take place at our school, App. 210, he also stated: Q. Is it your understanding as the principal of the high school that the high school can discipline students for conduct outside of school grounds. A. Yes, yes. Q. Statutorily, they can? A. Yes. Id. The principal thus did not assert that he lacked the statutory authority to impose discipline in this context. He defended his inaction, instead, on three more specific discretionary grounds: (1) that the only harasser then attending the high school, Nick Mangione, was the least culpable of the four; (2) that the Patrick report said that the sexual acts were consensual and that the prosecutor was not going to pursue the matter criminally; and (3) that he did not have any information directly from K.C. or her mother. App. 210. He did not claim there was nothing more the school had authority to do. On this recordparticularly bearing in mind that it must be read in the light most favorable to the plaintiffthere exists at least a disputed question of material fact regarding the reach of the school district's control over the situation. Moreover, while the actual sexual assaults in this case did not happen at school, much of the harassment did. The plaintiff's evidence shows that the boys repeatedly pestered K.C. for sex (including at least once on the school bus), that they were harassing her on the bus, [and] in the halls . . . at school, App. 169, and threatened to spread sexual rumors and naked photographs of her around the school. Her treatment in middle school had been so bad that she was afraid to go to math class. These claims are supported by more than oblique and general references in the record (Maj. Op. 1121-22 n. 1); they are documented in the plaintiff's deposition testimony and her complaints to the school counselor, and in many cases are confirmed by the police report. It is true that when she was in middle school, the district did not know that this in-school harassment was sexual in nature and thus was under no Title IX obligation to act. But after January 16 the defendants had the full story. Even if the after-school assaults themselves were beyond its jurisdiction, the school district was not entitled to ignore the in-school harassment, making no attempt to bring it to a halt. The majority also finds it reasonable that the school district deferred to law enforcement. Maj. Op. 1122; see also id. at 1123 (Principal Schmidt determined that discipline was not appropriate in this case since . . . Officer Patrick's investigation and the district attorney's assessment concluded that it would be difficult to prove that the conduct was not consensual.). But a school district's responsibilities to its students are not coterminous with a prosecutor's judgments about what cases to bring in court. The prosecutor did not conclude that the sex acts in which K.C. engaged were in fact consensual (whatever that might mean for a girl of her age and mental condition), but only that it was unlikely that the state could meet [its] burden of proof in a trial setting. App. 212. School discipline is not a trial setting. Student misconduct need not be established beyond a reasonable doubt. Moreover, even assuming the boys had committed no prosecutable criminal acts, that does not mean they did not engage in sexual harassment. Principal Schmidt admitted in his deposition that he believed that K.C. was sexually harassed. [3] That is what matters under Title IX. For purposes of Title IX, it is wholly irrelevant whether she was also the victim of criminal assault. A great deal of harassment falls short of the criminal; that does not mean a school with actual knowledge of harassing conduct is free to ignore it. The majority also suggests that the school district's inaction is excused by the fact that Ms. Rost and K.C. retained a lawyer and did not speak to the district after K.C.'s two-hour interview with Officer Patrick. I admit this gives me pause. It is difficult for school officials to work out a reasonable response to a student's problems when her mother prefers to protect her position in a future lawsuit rather than discuss what happened and what should be done. But schools have legal and pedagogical obligations even when their students' families are unhelpful or litigious. By the time the family's lawyer shut down communication, K.C. had already talked to Officer Patrick for about two hours and had given him numerous details of what had happened to her. The family's subsequent silence did not prevent the school from taking appropriate measures. The majority also emphasizes that administrators need not `engage in any particular disciplinary action' under Title IX. Maj. Op. 1123 (quoting Davis, 526 U.S. at 648-49, 119 S.Ct. 1661). The school was not necessarily required by federal law to expel the boys from school. A broad range of lesser measures might well be appropriate responses to a situation like this. If the school had undertaken any disciplinary measures, or attempted to ensure that K.C. could return to school without further harassment, it might well have satisfied its obligation. However, Title IX does not allow a school district, without justification, to decide that harassment must be met with criminal prosecution or nothing.
The majority also holds that even if the school district's non-response was unreasonable, the district is not liable because K.C. suffered no more harassment after she left school on January 16, 2003. This misunderstands Title IX. Title IX forbids a school district from exclud[ing] students on the basis of their sex. 20 U.S.C. § 1681(a). A district is liable for student-on-student sexual harassment that effectively bars the victim's access to an educational opportunity or benefit. Davis, 526 U.S. at 633, 119 S.Ct. 1661. Thus, if the district's deliberate indifference to K.C.'s sexual harassment is responsible for her decision, on advice of her psychiatrist, not to return to the school, the district is liable for illegally excluding her. The majority states that the district's response did not cause K.C. to undergo harassment or make her liable or vulnerable to it. Maj. Op. 1123-24. But the reason K.C. did not undergo additional harassment is that she never went back to school. Moreover, there is evidence from which a jury could infer that the school's non-response to the boys' sexual harassment is what kept her away. K.C.'s psychiatrist advised Ms. Rost that it was important to help [K.C.] find a safer environment, especially considering that if she goes back to the exact same high school, she will be around [the boys.] R. 310. When asked why she had refused to send K.C. back to school, Ms. Rost testified that she was relying on the psychiatrist's recommendation not to return. The majority is therefore wrong to conclude that Ms. Rost would not have allowed K.C. to return to any school in the district under any circumstances,  Maj. Op. 1123 n. 2 (emphasis added). The record suggests that it was the undeterred presence of the boys that kept K.C. from returning to school. The fact that K.C. was not harassed after leaving the school does not entitle the district to summary judgment. It is true that in Davis the Supreme Court said that, to create liability, deliberate indifference must, at a minimum, cause students to undergo harassment or make them liable or vulnerable to it, Davis, 526 U.S. at 645, 119 S.Ct. 1661, but that comment must not be taken out of context. Davis elaborated the further-harassment requirement in explaining that it was not necessary . . . to show physical exclusion to demonstrate that students have been deprived [of their rights.] Id. at 651, 119 S.Ct. 1661. Davis never suggested that exclusion would not be sufficient to create liability and indeed said that [t]he most obvious example of student-on-student sexual harassment capable of triggering a damages claim would . . . involve the overt, physical deprivation of access to school resources. Id. at 650, 119 S.Ct. 1661. If a school's unreasonable inaction in response to sexual harassment makes further harassment reasonably certain, it would make no sense to impose liability only if a student returned for more abuse, but not if she stayed away and was effectively excluded from participation in school. 20 U.S.C. § 1681(a).