EDUCATION EXPERT BLOG: EDUCATION LAW AND SCHOOL LIABILITY ISSUES

In 2011, the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a “Dear Colleague” letter to college and university administrators about implementation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 in regards to campus sexual assault cases. Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in...

Harassment in schools can occur when a student is discriminated against on the basis of national origin, race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender, or other identifiable class. A school district may be found liable for harassment if there is no strong, widely disseminated, and consistently enforced policy prohibiting it and...

Bullying Legal Standards Over the last several years, U.S. states have enacted laws that require public schools to develop policies and procedures to stop bullying.  New Jersey may have the toughest anti-bullying law in the nation, requiring schools to include in their policies that a teacher can be disciplined for not...

Schools have a duty to protect students from harm, including the harm inflicted or created by its own staff. While acts by a staff member resulting in injury to a student generally fit into the category of negligence, a teacher or an administrator as a state actor can generate a...

An elementary school principal claimed that a first grader violated the school’s sexual harassment policy. The boy’s crime? He was sitting behind a female classmate on the floor and put his fingers inside the waistband of her pants and touched her skin. He was accused of sexually harassing a classmate...

Wherever there are public and private schools and organizations that provide activities for children, there are stories about school sexual harassment and abuse. In West Virginia, a fifth-grade teacher started a “sex club” with some of her students. She brought them to her home to “teach” them, by demonstration, about...