Sexual Harassment in Schools

Federal Laws

Sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination and is illegal under Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 and under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (1964, amended 1972). Sexual harassment can contaminate the whole school environment, and its reach may embrace more than the immediate and intended target(s), such as innocent witnesses and bystanders.

The dilemma facing victims of sexual harassment is how to avoid the upsetting and degrading incidents that have become acceptable, ordinary, and public. What happens in public, if not interrupted, becomes normalized and acceptable over time. Moreover, students expect that if something scary, unpleasant, or illegal is happening in school, especially if it occurs in public, someone with authority will intervene to stop it, help out, or at least believe the victim afterwards. Yet sexual harassment seems for the most part to proceed mostly without adult intervention, thereby exacerbating and broadening its reach. In schools, sexual harassment is tenacious, pervasive, and operates as a kind of gendered violence.

U.S. Supreme Court Decisions

The educational establishment paid little attention to the subject of sexual harassment in K-12 schools until it was propelled into the national consciousness in February 1992 and again in May 1999. In the 1992 case, Franklin v. Gwinnett County (Georgia) Public Schools, a unanimous ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court found that schools could incur financial liability for sexual harassment and other violations of federal law Title IX. This case involved a female student who had sexual relations with her teacher on school grounds multiple times and the liability that the school district had for supervising his conduct. Although sexual harassment in K-12 schools had not been widely acknowledged prior to this 1992 Supreme Court decision, some state-level education agencies and feminists had written about this problem as early as 1979.

In May 1999, the Supreme Court ruled again on sexual harassment in school in Davis v. Monroe County (GA) Board of Education. This case involved sexual harassment that a fifth-grade girl (Davis) was receiving from a fifth-grade boy in her class. When she complained about the boy's conduct to her teachers [Page 665]and principal, they failed to take any action to remedy the harassment. In a 5-to-4 decision, the court ruled that schools are indeed liable for student-to-student sexual harassment when they know about the harassment and fail to stop it.

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