ELC News - NJ Appeals Court Holds District Liable for Bullying

In a precedent-setting December 7th ruling, a NJ Appellate Court has held that the State’s Law Against Discrimination (LAD) prohibits bullying in schools based on actual or perceived sexual orientation. The Court also ruled that school districts may be held liable for money damages and equitable relief under LAD if the harassment is "severe" or "pervasive," and that plaintiff students need not show that a school district acted with "deliberate indifference" to the harassment in order to prevail.

Education Law Center (ELC) appeared as a "friend of the court" in the case, L.W. v. Toms River Regional School Board of Education, together with other advocacy groups.

Specifically, the court ruled that LAD had been violated because: 1) the repeated taunting and physical assaults L.W. was subjected to, based on the perception that he was gay, created a hostile and threatening school environment; and 2) the school district knew or should have known about the harassment and failed to take effective and timely corrective action to halt it. The court faulted school administrators for a three month delay in ending the harassment in the seventh grade and for their "clearly inappropriate" response to two incidents occurring in high school. In rejecting the school administrators’ offer of protection to L.W. only "if he rode the school bus and ate his lunch in school," instead of walking and eating lunch in town like other students, the Court emphasized that the "district’s remedial measures should have been designed to alter the behavior of the harassers, not the person who was harassed."

In addition to confirming the district’s liability, the Court reviewed the compensatory and equitable relief awarded to L.W. by the Director of the Division on Civil Rights. Significantly, the Court upheld the award of $50,000 by the Director to L.W. as damages for his emotional distress, finding that the award was neither excessive nor outside the Director’s authority. The Court indicated, however, that the equitable relief ordered by the Director, such as mandatory staff training, may not be needed in light of the 2003 adoption of educational equity regulations by the NJ Commissioner of Education. The Court sent the case back to the Director to review the "educational equity policies" adopted by the district and any other actions taken to address peer harassment on the basis of sexual orientation.

"It is now clear that New Jersey students are entitled to attend school in an environment free of discriminatory harassment and bullying," said ELC Senior Attorney Elizabeth Athos. "The implications of this landmark ruling are tremendous, and, in its wake, school districts would be wise to take strong, decisive action when confronted with complaints of harassment."