J.F.K. v. Troup Cnty. Sch. Dist.

• Decision Date: 03 May 2012
• Docket Number: No. 11–13297.,11–13297.
• Parties: J.F.K., M.C.K., as Next Friends, Parents and Natural Guardians of O.K.K., a minor, Plaintiffs–Appellants, v. TROUP COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT, Elizabeth M. Gaddy, Defendants–Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

678 F.3d 1254

23 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. C 1005

J.F.K., M.C.K., as Next Friends, Parents and Natural Guardians of O.K.K., a minor, Plaintiffs–Appellants,

v.TROUP COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT, Elizabeth M. Gaddy, Defendants–Appellees.

No. 11–13297.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

May 3, 2012.

Craig Thomas Jones, Page Perry, LLC, Atlanta, GA, for Plaintiffs–Appellants.

Kenneth Drew Jones, Kevin Andrew Leipow, Hall Booth Smith & Slover, PC, Atlanta, GA, for Defendants–Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Before WILSON and MARTIN, Circuit Judges, and ALBRITTON,^* District Judge.

ALBRITTON, District Judge:

I. Introduction

J.F.K., et al., appeal the district court's grant of Troup County School District's (“Troup”) motion for summary judgment as to the Plaintiffs' sexual harassment claim brought pursuant to Title IX, 20 U.S.C. § 1681.¹

The Appellants argue that the district court improperly applied a Title VII framework instead of the appropriate Title IX framework. Moreover, the Appellants argue that, although the district court offered a correct account of the facts, it erred by deciding that those facts, taken in a light most favorable to the Appellants, failed to create an issue of material fact as to the notice prong of the Title IX framework.

II. Legal Standards

A. Summary Judgment

This court reviews de novo a district court's grant of summary judgment, applying the same legal standards as the district court. Tiara Condo. Ass'ns, Inc. v. Marsh & McLennan Co., Inc., 607 F.3d 742 (11th Cir.2010). This court will affirm if, after construing the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-movant, it finds that no genuine issue of material fact exists and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Alvarez v. Royal Atlantic Developers, Inc., 610 F.3d 1253, 1263–64 (11th Cir.2010). Moreover, the “district court's decision may be affirmed if the result is correct, even if the court relied upon an incorrect ground or gave a wrong reason.” Id. (citing Turlington v. Atlanta Gas Light Co., 135 F.3d 1428, 1433 n. 9 (11th Cir.1998)).

B. Title IX Standard

While we agree with the result of the district court's decision, we write to correct the standard applied by it.

The Supreme Court has recognized an implied right of action under Title IX, 20 U.S.C. § 1681, against a school district receiving federal education funding for sexual harassment of a student by a teacher ( see Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools, 503 U.S. 60, 75, 112 S.Ct. 1028, 117 L.Ed.2d 208 (1992)), although agency principles may not be used to impute liability for misconduct of its teacher ( see Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School Dist., 524 U.S. 274, 283, 118 S.Ct. 1989, 141 L.Ed.2d 277 (1998)).

This court has explained that “the Supreme Court made plain that not all sexual harassment by teachers is sufficient to impose liability on a school district.” Doe v. School Bd. Of Broward County, Fla., 604 F.3d 1248, 1254 (11th Cir.2010) (citing Gebser). In order to defeat summary judgment for such a claim, the plaintiff must satisfy three different inquiries. Id. The plaintiff must be able to 1) identify a person with “authority to take corrective measures in response to actual notice of sexual harassment,” 2) demonstrate that the notice was “sufficient to alert the school official of the possibility of the Title IX plaintiff's harassment,” and 3) show that the authority figure acted with deliberate indifference to the notice of harassment. Id. There is no dispute that the school's principal, Thomas Whatley (“Whatley”), is the appropriately identified authority figure who satisfies the first inquiry. The Appellants' first issue on appeal, then, is with the district court's articulation of the standard to be applied for the second inquiry, the substance of the actual notice.

The district court combined Title VII workplace discrimination standards with Title IX teacher-on-student harassment standards when it articulated the Appellants' burden as to inquiry two as follows:

To summarize, Plaintiffs bear the burden of demonstrating that a reasonable person in Principal Whatley's position would conclude, based on what he had learned, that O.K.K. had been subject to unwelcome harassment by Gaddy that was either gender based or sexual in nature and that the harassment was so severe and pervasive that it threatened to create a hostile (or abusive) environment in an educational program or activity.

The district court's articulation of the standard improperly added two provisions. First, the district court improperly included an inquiry as to whether or not the harassment by Gaddy was “unwelcome.” Such an inquiry has never been part of the teacher-on-student harassment calculus. Second, the district court improperly included the requirement that the harassment be so severe and pervasive that it threatened to create a hostile environment in an educational program or activity. Again, as to teacher-on-student harassment, this has never been required. In fact, in Sauls v. Pierce County School District, 399 F.3d 1279 (11th Cir.2005), this court noted that “[b]ecause this case involves teacher-on-student harassment, Appellants need not establish [the teacher's] misconduct was ‘so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive’ that it denied [the plaintiff] equal access to educational programs or opportunities.” Id. at 1284. The addition of these two factors created a standard more favorable to defendants than was envisioned by this court in Broward.

The Appellants argue, and this court agrees, that the simple articulation of the standard in Broward is sufficient. Simply put, the actual notice must be sufficient to alert the decision-maker to the possibility of sexual harassment by the teacher.

The district court's reliance on the wrong standard does not necessarily mandate that this court must now reverse its decision and remand the case. Because this court reviews a district court's grant of summary judgment de novo, it will now consider whether the record facts establish that the Appellants have satisfied their burden to defeat summary judgment as to their Title IX claim.

III. Facts²

The facts of this case stem from circumstances surrounding the sexual molestation of a twelve year old boy, O.K.K., by his forty-five year old seventh grade homeroom teacher, Elizabeth Gaddy (“Gaddy”). As a result of an independent investigation begun in November, 2008, Gaddy was charged criminally with child molestation, pled guilty on October 19, 2009, to committing at least five acts of oral sex on O.K.K. between May 20, 2008 and August 7, 2008, and was sentenced to prison. J.F.K., O.K.K.'s father, and M.C.K., O.K.K.'s mother, brought this Title IX claim on behalf of O.K.K., alleging that Troup is liable under Title IX because the actions taken by Principal Whatley failed to protect O.K.K. from Gaddy's assaults. The content of Whatley's knowledge as to the circumstances in this case will be determinative of Appellants' claims. Accordingly, the following facts, together with all justifiable inferences therefrom, construed in the light most favorable to the Plaintiffs, are limited to what the record shows Whatley knew about the situation giving rise to the sexual assaults of O.K.K.

During the middle of the 2007–2008 school year, roughly January 2008, Principal Whatley received a complaint from a parent, Michelle Scarborough, about Gaddy's conduct towards her son, one of Gaddy's seventh grade students. She explained to Whatley that, although she had given Gaddy permission to take her son with a group of students to go bowling in Columbus, her son did not return until after midnight. She also informed Whatley that Gaddy had continued to call the Scarborough home to ask if her son could go on other non-school related trips. Whatley was also shown a text message sent to the student by Gaddy encouraging the boy to skip his class and to come to her classroom so that he could see his girlfriend. Moreover, Mrs. Scarborough showed Whatley a note in which Gaddy encouraged the student to lie to his parents about skipping class. Gaddy and the student's parents met with Whatley to discuss this incident, and Gaddy explained that her daughter sent the text message to their son. The end result of this incident was that the parents asked for their son to be moved to another set of teachers, which was subsequently granted.

At another point in the 2007–2008 school year, another teacher at O.K.K.'s school, Ashley Summerlin, told Principal Whatley that O.K.K.'s phone number was in Gaddy's cell phone address book listed under the teacher's name, “Ashley Summerlin.” Linda Smith (“Smith”), another seventh grade teacher at O.K.K.'s school, stated in her deposition that she told Summerlin about his name being in Gaddy's phone and that Gaddy's daughter was the one who showed her.

Some time after these incidents, likely in April 2008, Smith contacted J.F.K. about Gaddy's conduct during a spring break trip which Smith's family and Gaddy's family had taken together in early April 2008. J.F.K. testified in his deposition that Smith's conversation with him about the spring break trip concerned the fact that he needed to check O.K.K.'s phone because Gaddy had been constantly sending O.K.K. text messages. Smith testified to the same and explained that she told J.F.K. that she would not want a forty-five year old to have that much control over her twelve year old. She also testified that she told him that she did not think anything was going on except that Gaddy appeared to enjoy the attention. After receiving this information, J.F.K. spoke with Principal Whatley.

During the conversation with Whatley, J.F.K. expressed some of his concerns about Gaddy. He told Whatley that Gaddy was texting O.K.K. too much and that gifts O.K.K. received for Christmas from the Gaddys were too expensive “even if [Gaddy's daughter] was his...