Davis Ex Rel. LaShonda D. v. Monroe County Board of Education
The Supreme Court ruled that schools receiving federal funds can be sued for money damages under Title IX when they know about severe student-on-student sexual harassment and respond with deliberate indifference.
The 5-4 decision extends Title IX liability beyond teacher misconduct to cover schools' failure to address peer harassment, but only when the harassment is severe enough to deny a student equal access to education and school officials' response is clearly unreasonable.
“We thus conclude that funding recipients are properly held liable in damages only where they are deliberately indifferent to sexual harassment, of which they have actual knowledge, that is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it can be said to deprive the victims of access to the educational opportunities or benefits provided by the school.”
The Court's core standard for when a school can be sued for damages over peer sexual harassment.
How it got here: A federal trial court dismissed the Title IX claim against the school board; the Eleventh Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed; the student's mother asked the Supreme Court to review the dismissal.
The Case in Depth
What happened
A fifth-grade girl in a Georgia public school alleged that a male classmate repeatedly touched her and made vulgar sexual comments over five months. She and her mother repeatedly reported the conduct to teachers and the principal, but the school took no disciplinary action until the boy eventually pleaded guilty to sexual battery. The girl's grades dropped and she wrote a suicide note during this period.
The question before the Court
Can a public school be sued for money damages under a federal law banning sex discrimination in education when one student sexually harasses another and school officials do nothing about it?
The Court's answer
Yes — the Court ruled that a school can be sued for money damages under Title IX for student-on-student sexual harassment, but only under narrow conditions. The school must have actual knowledge of the harassment, must respond in a way that is clearly unreasonable, and the harassment itself must be severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive enough to effectively deny the victim access to educational opportunities.
This is a meaningful extension of the Court's earlier ruling covering teacher harassment of students, but the Court stressed real limits: ordinary teasing and name-calling among children don't count, schools aren't required to expel every accused harasser, and courts should still generally defer to school administrators' disciplinary judgment calls. Applying this standard, the Court found the mother's specific allegations — months of ignored complaints about repeated physical harassment — were enough to let her case proceed.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Students harassed by classmates now have a path to sue their school districts for damages if administrators knew about severe harassment and did nothing meaningful. School officials must respond to reports of peer sexual harassment or risk federal liability, though courts will still defer to reasonable disciplinary judgment calls schools make.
What changes now
The case is sent back to the lower courts, where the mother will have the opportunity to try to prove her claim under the new deliberate-indifference standard the Court laid out. This is a final ruling on the legal standard, though the case itself is not yet resolved on the facts. Other school districts nationwide must now assess their own policies for responding to reports of student-on-student sexual harassment in light of this ruling.
What this does not decide
The Court made clear it was not requiring schools to expel or specifically discipline every accused harasser, nor giving victims a right to dictate particular remedies like seat changes. It also did not decide whether the mother could ultimately prove her claim — only that the complaint was sufficient to proceed past a motion to dismiss.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Kennedy
“The fence the Court has built is made of little sticks, and it cannot contain the avalanche of liability now set in motion.”Kennedy's warning that the majority's limits on liability would not prevent widespread lawsuits against schools.
Justice Kennedy argued that Title IX, as a Spending Clause statute, never gave school districts clear notice that they could be liable in damages for failing to stop peer harassment. He contended the majority's 'control' test for when harassment is 'under' a school's program is vague and unworkable, that schools have far less control over students than over teachers or agents, and that the ruling will unleash a flood of costly, unpredictable litigation against school districts nationwide, intruding on matters better left to states, parents, and educators.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied the Spending Clause notice principle from an earlier case, which requires that a law conditioning federal funding on certain conduct must speak clearly enough that a school accepting the money understands what it is agreeing to.
- Building on its earlier ruling about teacher-student harassment, the Court held that a school can be directly liable under Title IX only where it acts with deliberate indifference — that is, its own response to known harassment is clearly unreasonable — not merely because a student misbehaved.
- The Court reasoned that a school's control over students, especially during school hours and on school property, is enough for a school's failure to respond to count as 'subjecting' a student to discrimination 'under' the school's programs, even without using agency law to blame the school for the harasser's acts directly.
- The Court limited liability to harassment that is severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive enough to effectively deny the victim access to educational opportunities, distinguishing this from ordinary teasing or name-calling among children.
- Applying that standard to the complaint's allegations — months of repeated harassment, physical touching, multiple reports to school staff, a drop in grades, and no disciplinary response — the Court concluded the claim was sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School Dist. (524 U.S. 274)
The Court relied on and extended Gebser's deliberate-indifference standard for teacher harassment to cover student-on-student harassment.
Reaffirms Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman (451 U.S. 1)
The Court applied Pennhurst's rule that Spending Clause laws must give funding recipients clear notice of liability.