W.D.Pa: Title IX, Spending Clause permit emotional damages

A Pennsylvania federal district court held that damages for emotional harm are recoverable under Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education.

The court emphasized that limitations on private remedies based on the Supreme Court’s Spending Clause jurisprudence should not be “taken too far,” and found that it is foreseeable that violations of civil rights laws will cause emotional harm. Dawn L. ex rel. M.L. v. Greater Johnstown Sch. Dist., -- F.Supp.2d ----, 2008 WL 4963347 (W.D.Pa. Nov. 13, 2008) (No. 3:06-19).

 

          The plaintiffs are parents who brought Title IX claims for peer-on-peer sexual harassment on behalf of daughter, and retaliation claims on behalf of themselves. The court made extensive factual findings, concluding that the school district violated Title IX through its deliberate indifference to ongoing sexual assaults and harassment by another middle-school student over a period of months. The court faulted the school for failing to take meaningful action until criminal charges appeared imminent, calling its ineffectual responses “a compendium of the patently unreasonable.” The court also found that the district retaliated against the mother by effectively barring her from volunteer work within the district.

 

          With regard to available damages, the court noted that under legislation (like Title IX) adopted under the Spending Clause of the Constitution, the Supreme Court has held that a state entity must have “notice of the nature of [any potential] liability at the time it accepts federal funds.” See Barnes v. Gorman, 536 U.S. 181 (2002) (holding punitive damages not available under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act). The high court has analogized Spending Clause legislation to a contract. Barnes stated that state officials “generally” have sufficient notice of liabilities imposed by such legislation as well as those remedies “traditionally” available in contract law.

 

          The district court stated that while damages for emotional harm are traditionally unavailable under contract law, “the ‘contract-law analogy’ cannot be taken too far.” The court further noted that contract law varies from state to state, and attempting to apply these variable principles to federal laws would frustrate their purposes. Cf. Bolden v. Se. Pa. Transp. Auth., 21 F.3d 29, 35 (3d Cir. 1994) (refusing to apply state common law principles to emotional distress damages in Section 1983 suit). The court pointed to the concurring opinion of Justices Souter and O’Connor in Barnes, who suggested that this analogy would not be useful to determining the proper measure of compensatory damages. It also pointed to Sheely v. MRI Radiology Network, 505 F.3d 1173 (11th Cir. 2007) (summary here), which held that emotional damages are available under Rehabilitation Act, another Spending Clause statute. The court said that the contract analogy “is merely shorthand for the precept that” state entities should not be subjected to conditions of which they “could not fairly have been aware.”

 

          Quoting Sheely, and pointing to numerous cases, the court said it was “‘fairly obvious’ that civil rights violations can engender emotional distress.” Accordingly, emotional distress is a “foreseeable consequence” of violating statutes such as Title IX.

 

          Accordingly, the court awarded $5,000 for the student’s emotional damages, and $1,000 for her mother’s. The court also awarded litigation costs to plaintiffs, and invited a motion for attorneys’ fees. The court refused to order the school to comply with pre-existing policies on sexual harassment and student safety that it had failed to follow, saying that such an injunction “would inevitably insert the Court into the day-to-day administration of the District.” Instead, the court said it was confident that “the pedagogical value of this opinion will not escape” school administrators or school board members.