Court Says Schools Must Protect Students from Harassment
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- Public schools can be held liable for repeated, prolonged student-on-student sexual harassment, the state Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in a case brought by a New Jersey boy who contended he was victimized by years of homophobic taunts and attacks until he finally withdrew from school.
The court ruled unanimously that New Jersey's Law Against Discrimination was intended to protect students from harassment based on sexual orientation, and that it is up to school districts to take reasonable steps to stop ongoing mistreatment.
Chief Justice James Zazzali wrote that students are entitled to a hostile-free education environment, much like employees are entitled to hostile-free work environments.
"Students in the classroom are entitled to no less protection from unlawful discrimination and harassment than their adult counterparts in the workplace,'' Zazzali wrote. "Reasonable measures are required to protect our youth, a duty that schools are more than capable of performing.''
The case was sent back to the Office of Administrative Law for a hearing on whether the school district was negligent.
While schools are not required to purge their institutions of all peer harassment to avoid liability, the ruling says they are mandated to "implement effective preventative and remedial measures to curb severe or pervasive discriminatory mistreatment.''
"The Toms River School District is pleased with the decision because what it establishes is a separate standard for violation of the Law Against Discrimination in schools as opposed to the workplace,'' said Thomas E. Monahan, the district's lawyer.
He said the court made the distinction to accommodate schools' mission to educate.
"We cannot fire a student,'' Monahan said. "We have to educate in addition to penalize.''
The Attorney General's Office also praised the ruling as added protection for students against sexual-orientation harassment and bullying.
"We applaud the court for issuing a decision that recognized the promise of the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination to eradicate the cancer of discrimination,'' said Attorney General spokesman Lee Moore.
The decision caps a discrimination suit brought by a student against the Toms River Regional School District. The student, identified in court filings as L.W., contended he endured name-calling and other sexual harassment beginning in the fourth grade. The taunts escalated to physical assaults that did not end until the boy withdrew to attend private school as a high school freshman, at the district's expense.
The district employed progressive disciplinary action against some offending students, the filings show, but the reprimands were student-specific and were not accompanied by any organized reinforcement of the district's anti-discrimination policy.
The state Division on Civil Rights awarded the boy $50,000 in emotional distress damages, which was affirmed on appeal but set aside by Wednesday's ruling. The Appellate Division reversed the portion of the Civil Rights order requiring districtwide remedial measures, saying the record did not demonstrate a districtwide problem.
The split at the appellate level meant the appeal automatically went to the Supreme Court.
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