State may sue upstate NY school district over widespread gender-based harassment and violence

The Court of Appeals holds that the State of New York may sue an upstate New York school district over its alleged failure to protect students from sexual harassment and assault. This ruling clarifies the state's authority to bring a case like this, holding that the state is not required to prove a "policy or practice" of discriminating against student victims of gender-based violence and harassment.

The case is State of New York v. Niagara Wheatfield Central School District, issued on October 15. The state has authority to sue municipalities over civil rights violations if it can show the lawsuit promotes the state's interest in the health and well-being, both physical and economic, of its residents in general. Otherwise, in a case like this, the students or their parents must bring suit, not the state.

The decision summarizes the school district's failure to properly respond to four individual students' complaints of sexual assault, harassment and gender-based violence. The allegations are jarring, though the Court of Appeals (Sack, Cabranes and Merriam) notes that, at the pleading stage, these allegations have not yet been proven. Still, we assume the allegations are true for purposes of deciding whether the state has the legal authority to bring this case.

The main event here is that the trial court dismissed the case, holding that the state merely alleges four distinct incidents that did not reveal a generalized policy or practice by the district not to protect students from this kind of gender-based abuse. But, the Court of Appeals notes, there is no legal authority for such a narrow holding. What matters instead is that the state show sufficient injury to an identifiable group of individuals and indirect effects of that injury beyond that group. This is a much more lenient test than the one applied by the district court.

The state is able to litigate this case because the four victims of violence and harassment constitute an identifiable group of individuals harmed by the school district's inaction, and the state alleges that dozens of other students also had their similar complaints ignored by the district. The indirect effects of the district's inaction extends to the community at large and the student's parents, who believed the district would not protect their children. And, this inaction allowed the harassing behavior to spread from a handful of perpetrators to a significant number. We have ourselves a lawsuit, and discovery will take years to complete.