S.C. v. Metro. Gov't of Nashville & Davidson Cnty.
| Decision Date | 12 January 2022 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 3:17-cv-01098 |
| Citation | 579 F.Supp.3d 999 |
| Parties | S.C., Plaintiff, v. METROPOLITAN GOVERNMENT OF NASHVILLE AND DAVIDSON COUNTY, TENNESSEE, d/b/a Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Middle District of Tennessee |
Mary Ann Parker, Stephen C. Crofford, Parker & Crofford, Brentwood, TN, for Plaintiff.
J. Brooks Fox, Melissa S. Roberge, Metropolitan Legal Department, Nashville, TN, for Defendant.
FINDINGS OF FACT & CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
On July 20th and 21st, 2021, the court held a bench trial on claims brought by S.C. against the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools ("MNPS"), in which S.C., now an adult, was formerly a student. S.C. asserts claims under Section 901(a) of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. § 1681(a), and 42 U.S.C. § 1983. For the reasons set out herein, the court will enter a verdict in favor of S.C. on the Title IX count and in favor of MNPS on the § 1983 count.
This case involves MNPS's handling of an incident that occurred on April 17, 2017, and the subsequent fallout from that incident. In short, S.C. was a 15-year-old freshman at MNPS's Hunters Lane High School ("Hunters Lane"), when another student videorecorded sexual activities that occurred between S.C. and a male student on school property. S.C. maintains that she did not consent to either the sexual activity, which she characterizes as a rape, or to the recording of that activity, let alone any dissemination of the recording to third parties. Nevertheless, the video—which was, by any reasonable definition, child pornography—spread quickly, both between S.C.'s peers and on third-party websites. S.C., facing both humiliation related to the video and threats from other students related to her cooperation in MNPS's investigation of the incident, completed the remainder of the school year from home, after which her family moved to a different county. On July 31, 2017, S.C.'s mother sued MNPS on her behalf. (Doc. No. 1.) Because S.C. has now reached adulthood, she is pursuing the claims in her own right. (See Doc. No. 142 (Agreed Order Substituting Party).)
As troubling as S.C.'s predicament was, it was not unique. To the contrary, three other MNPS students—all girls—also filed suit alleging the same basic pattern of events: each girl was part of a sexual encounter on school property that she considered unwelcome; each sexual encounter was videorecorded with a cell phone; each video was disseminated to third parties; each girl's education was severely disrupted; and each girl believed both that errors by MNPS contributed to the initial events and that MNPS had made matters worse by mishandling the situations after it learned of them. Accordingly, each plaintiff asserted both so-called "before" and "after" claims—that is, both claims that MNPS's actions prior to the underlying incidents contributed to those incidents and claims alleging that MNPS's actions after the incidents contributed to further disruption of the students' educations.
The court consolidated the cases, and, following discovery, MNPS filed several Motions for Summary Judgment. (Doc. Nos. 71, 76, 82, 83.) On May 6, 2019, the court denied those motions in full, with the exception of the motion regarding the claims of another Hunters Lane student, Sally Doe,1 which the court granted in part and denied in part. Specifically, the court granted MNPS summary judgment with regard to Sally Doe's "after" claims but permitted her "before" claims to proceed. (Doc. No. 101 at 52.)
Because the court's Order did not fully resolve the plaintiffs' claims, it was not appealable, by right, to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. On May 20, 2019, MNPS filed a motion seeking a certificate of appealability pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b), which would allow it to apply for an interlocutory appeal. The court considered MNPS's argument in the context of the existing caselaw regarding claims based on student-on-student sexual misconduct and ultimately issued MNPS a certificate of appealability with regard to two issues:
The court recognized that the two questions covered by the certificate of appealability were of central importance to the plaintiffs' cases and, accordingly, stayed proceedings until any appeal could be resolved. While MNPS's petition for permission to appeal was pending in the Sixth Circuit, however, a panel of that court issued an opinion in an unrelated case involving unwanted sexual contact between adult college students, Kollaritsch v. Michigan State University Board of Trustees , 944 F.3d 613 (6th Cir. 2019), that has, as a practical matter, dictated much of the course of this litigation since that opinion was issued.
The plaintiffs in Kollaritsch were four women students at Michigan State University ("MSU") who had filed claims under Title IX and § 1983, alleging that they had been assaulted by male peers and who took issue with the university's handling of their allegations. Kollaritsch , 944 F.3d at 618. Kollaritsch's similarity to the cases then pending in this court was limited— Kollaritsch , after all, involved a different type of student, subjected to a distinguishable pattern of undesirable behavior, at a different type of educational institution. The opinion that resulted from the college students' claims in Kollaritsch , however, was strikingly broad—so much so that one member of the panel who concurred in most of the majority's reasoning filed a separate opinion, lamenting that the majority's pronouncements amounted to "exercis[ing] a lawmaking power that [the courts] do not rightfully possess." Id. at 630 (6th Cir. 2019) (Rogers, J., concurring) (quoting Pierre Leval, Judging Under the Constitution: Dicta about Dicta, 81 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1249, 1250 (2006) ). Nevertheless, the full majority opinion in Kollaritsch commanded two votes, and the opinion was published, making it the law of this circuit.
Because Kollaritsch was central to the course of this litigation and remains central to how the court must examine S.C.'s remaining claims, a brief examination of the details of Kollaritsch may be helpful. The Kollaritsch plaintiffs had been assaulted by fellow students and "contend[ed] that the [MSU] administration's response [to their assaults] was inadequate, caused them physical and emotional harm, and consequently denied them educational opportunities." Kollaritsch , 944 F.3d at 618. The district court had dismissed some, but not all, of the plaintiffs' claims, and MSU pursued an interlocutory appeal. Id. The Sixth Circuit concluded that all of the claims should be dismissed and expressly held that, to prevail on a Title IX claim arising out of peer harassment, "a student-victim plaintiff must plead, and ultimately prove, that the school had actual knowledge of actionable sexual harassment and that the school's deliberate indifference to it resulted in further actionable sexual harassment against the student-victim, which caused the Title IX injuries." Id. at 618. The court further held that the initial sexual harassment giving notice and the later sexual harassment giving rise to the claim "must be inflicted against the same victim," meaning that a "plaintiff ‘cannot ... premise the [further harassment] element of her Title IX claim on conduct [by the perpetrator] directed at third parties." Id. at 621–22 (quoting Pahssen v. Merrill Cmty. Sch. Dist. , 668 F.3d 356, 363 (6th Cir. 2012) ; citing Patterson v. Hudson Area Sch. , 551 F.3d 438, 451 (6th Cir. 2009) (Vinson, J., dissenting)) (alterations in original). In other words, after a student experiences sexual harassment, and the school becomes aware of the harassment, "at least one more (further ) incident of harassment"—attributable to the school's improper response to the original harassment—"is necessary to state a claim." Id. at 621.
The Sixth Circuit therefore concluded that, "[b]ecause none of the plaintiffs ... suffered any actionable sexual harassment after the school's response, they ... [could not] meet the causation element" required to establish liability of the government under Title IX or § 1983. Id. at 618. The court also rejected the possibility that the school's mishandling of the initial harassment might itself give rise to a claim, without the need for an additional post-notice incident. "A student-victim's subjective dissatisfaction with the school's response," the court wrote, "is immaterial to whether the school's response caused the claimed Title IX violation." Id. at 618. Even if that "subjective dissatisfaction" is entirely reasonable and interferes in the student's education, it is an injury attributable to the initial harassment—for which the school, under Kollaritsch , is not responsible—and therefore cannot be the basis for liability on the part of the school.
The Sixth Circuit grounded some of its reasoning in traditional principles of antidiscrimination law, but it also—like the Supreme Court in the lead case on these matters, Davis ex rel. LaShonda D. v. Monroe Cty. Bd. of Educ. , 526 U.S. 629, 652, 119 S.Ct....
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