Dive Brief:
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A Title IX lawsuit stemming from claims that North Carolina's Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools failed to address an ongoing hostile environment that encouraged rape culture and discouraged sexual assault reporting is expected to be heard in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this year.
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The 2018 lawsuit — filed on behalf of an unnamed student against the district’s board of education, a former administrator for Myers Park High School, and a school resource officer — alleges that in failing to address a hostile environment, the school and its resource officer contributed to an alleged rape on school grounds.
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In documents filed last month on appeal, the plaintiff claims the SRO cautioned Jane Doe against making a false report and wrongly characterized Doe's experience in a noncriminal police report as being "uncomfortable" during the incident rather than forced sex.
Dive Insight:
The original complaint in the case said the SRO recorded the incident as "a non-criminal case of two students skipping school" instead of fulfilling the school’s Title IX obligations of investigating the survivor's allegations and providing support.
A U.S. District Court jury in 2023 found that Doe had been sexually assaulted but not that the school district and police department had acted with deliberate indifference. Doe's team said in February 2023 she intended to appeal and did so in September of that year.
Oral arguments are expected before the 4th Circuit later this year.
The plaintiff's claims outline a situation that mirrors other schools' decisions nationwide to pause or entirely pass their Title IX responsibilities to law enforcement or other third parties — a pattern echoed in various cases settled by the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights in the last year.
OCR Assistant Secretary Catherine Lhamon noted in October 2023 that she was tracking cases of schools deferring or abdicating their Title IX responsibilities "distressingly often in investigations right now." Lhamon also served as OCR assistant secretary for civil rights under the Obama administration and investigated such cases then.
In a roughly three-month period between late July and September last year, a 2023 K-12 Dive investigation found, the federal agency's civil rights enforcement arm resolved at least five cases related to districts deferring their duties to third parties to the detriment of students' academic performance and mental health. K-12 Dive also discovered the pattern in a number of other civil rights lawsuits and allegations from survivors.
Many of these cases overlapped with reports of negative school climates that deter sexual assault reporting and schools having untrained or absent Title IX coordinators. Often, students in these cases ended up transferring schools, at least temporarily.
In the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools case, lawyers claimed that district employees had "discriminatory beliefs and attitudes" toward sexual assault survivors and "routinely and automatically discounted female students who reported student-perpetrated sexual misconduct."
"Among other things, officials at MPHS warned girls who reported sexual misconduct that they themselves could be charged with crimes or misconduct if they were found to be lying," according to the lawsuit filed on behalf of Jane Doe by LL Dunn Law.
Doe experienced "extreme emotional distress" from "the preventable sexual assault" that continues to impact the jobs and work shifts she accepts as a 20-year-old college student, according to her lawsuit. Following the alleged rape, Doe took temporary leave from Myers Park High School and then permanently transferred out of the school.
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