High Court Takes Harassment Case

WASHINGTON —  The Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it will consider holding school districts liable for damages if principals and teachers fail to stop the severe and persistent harassment of one student by another.

The justices said they will take up the case of a Georgia schoolgirl to resolve an issue on the frontier of sexual harassment law.

Over the last 20 years, employees have won steadily stronger protections against harassment on the job. Now, women’s rights advocates are arguing that children deserve similar protection from physical and verbal abuse at school.

The case involves a fifth-grader who was repeatedly grabbed, taunted and subjected to vulgar abuse in hallways and the classroom by a fifth-grade boy. Though the girl’s mother, Aurelia Davis, complained to several teachers and the principal, nothing was done, she said.

Title IX in the federal education code prohibits sex discrimination in schools and colleges. But when the mother sued on her daughter’s behalf, federal judges in Atlanta dismissed the case before trial. They ruled that schools cannot be held liable for the misconduct of students.

The mother appealed, and the National Women’s Law Center, joined by the Clinton administration, urged the high court to take up the case (Davis vs. Monroe County, 97-843). They argued that school systems should be held liable for damages “when school officials know that severe or pervasive sexual harassment of a student is occurring” yet fail to intervene.

In June, the justices on a 5-4 vote shielded school districts from paying damages for a teacher’s secret affair with a student, in part because school officials knew nothing of the matter. The new case differs, however, because officials were well aware of the problem.

Women’s rights lawyers maintained that school leaders will take firm steps to stop students from harassing other students only when the first victims are awarded money damages.

The new sexual harassment dispute was among 12 new cases the court agreed to review in the new term, which officially opens next week.

The justices met Monday morning to sift through the 1,701 appeals that had arrived over the summer. Virtually all those that did not win a review will be officially dismissed next Monday. A few may be held over for further consideration.

Three of the cases that will be heard came from California, including a major dispute over the constitutionality of the 1992 state welfare law.

In hopes of ending what they called the “welfare magnet” in California, lawmakers voted to set lower monthly benefits for one year for newcomers to the state.

For example, a woman identified as “Brenda Roe” had received $307 in welfare benefits in Oklahoma. When she moved to Long Beach in 1997, she would have been entitled to receive $565 per month under California law. Under the 1992 law, her benefits would remain at $307 for one year.

A federal judge in Sacramento and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the two-tiered system as unconstitutional because it discriminates between old and new state residents. Acting on an appeal from state social services director Eloise Anderson, the high court said it will hear the case (Anderson vs. Roe, 98-97) in January.

Dentists and their patients may be interested in the outcome of an antitrust dispute involving the California Dental Assn., based in Sacramento.

The court will rule on whether the professional group, which enrolls 75% of the state’s dentists, violated federal free-trade laws when it disciplined members who advertised their lower fees (California Dental Assn. vs. Federal Trade Commission, 97-1625).

In another case, the rights of stockholders will be tested in a dispute involving the huge pension fund for California public employees (California Public Employees Retirement System vs. Felzen, 97-1732).

The California Public Employees Retirement System, with assets of $110 billion, is the largest governmental pension fund in the United States. It had invested heavily in Archer Daniels Midland Co., the agribusiness giant, which paid $190 million in fines and damage claims when its executives pleaded guilty to price-fixing charges in 1996.

Lawyers for the pension fund hoped that a pending lawsuit against the company’s directors would allow the corporation to recoup some of those losses. Instead, the company officials agreed to an $8-million settlement proposed by some of their competitors. The money went to the competitors and their lawyers.

“Not one dime was returned to the corporation for shareholders,” said CalPERS officials. Yet, when the pension fund tried to intervene on behalf of its shareholders, the U.S. court of appeals in Chicago threw them out of court.

In the Supreme Court, the state pension fund will argue that shareholders of the company deserve a voice in a settlement that affects their rights and their pocketbooks.