Justia Education Law Opinion Summaries

In an effort to address a perceived drug and alcohol problem among its students, Goshen County School District No. 1 ("school district") adopted a policy requiring all students who participated in extracurricular activities to consent to random testing for alcohol and drugs. At issue was whether the district court properly granted summary judgment in favor of the school district where both parties agreed that there were no genuine issues of material fact but disagreed about whether the district court correctly applied the provisions of the Wyoming and United States Constitutions to the undisputed facts. The court held that appellants failed to demonstrate that the school district's policy subjected students to searches that were unreasonable under all of the circumstances and therefore, the policy did not violate Article 1, section 4 of the Wyoming Constitution. The court also held that the fact that the policy did not subject students to unreasonable seizures was, therefore, determinative of appellants' equal protection claim as well. The court further held that appellant had not demonstrated infringement of due process rights where appellants' speculation that judicial review might be denied in the future was insufficient to support a due process claim now. Accordingly, because appellants failed to prove that the school district's policy was unconstitutional, there was no basis for their claim that they were entitled to a permanent injunction or for their claim that the district court erred in granting summary judgment.

Petitioners, two tenured teachers in the New York City School system, commenced Article 78 proceedings against the Board of Education for orders compelling respondent to expunge "letters of reprimand" from their personnel files for failure to follow Education Law 3020-a procedures. Respondent contended that the letters were properly placed in petitioners' files because, pursuant to the 2007-2009 Collective Bargaining Agreement ("CBA"), petitioners' union waived the section 3020-1 procedures with respect to the placement of letters of reprimand in tenured teacher's files and agreed to replace them with a different procedure described in Article 21A. The court found that there was ample basis to conclude that the union knowingly waived the procedural rights granted in section 3020-a and held that, because the letters at issue were not subject to section 3020-a procedures, petitioners were not entitled to have them expunged.

Defendants appealed from an order of the district court granting summary judgment to plaintiffs and entering a permanent injunction barring the Board of Education of the City of New York ("Board") from enforcing a rule that prohibited outside groups from using school facilities after hours for "religious worship services." At issue was whether the rule constituted viewpoint discrimination in violation of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. The court held that because the rule did not exclude expressions of religious points of view or of religious devotion, but excluded for valid non discriminatory reasons only a type of activity, the conduct worship services, the rule did not constitute viewpoint discrimination. The court also held that because defendants reasonably sought by this rule to avoid violating the Establishment Clause, the exclusion of religious worship services was a reasonable content-based restriction, which did not violate the Free Speech Clause. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court was reversed and the injunction barring enforcement of the rule against plaintiffs was vacated.

A suit by a school district employee, terminated after absence under the Family and Medical Leave Act, was dismissed. The Seventh Circuit remanded claims under the FMLA and for breach of contract. The parties entered a settlement agreement. After the superintendent for the district took his own life, the employee challenged the agreement and refused to sign the agreement. The district court dismissed the entire case and a motion for sanctions against the employee is pending. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. The oral settlement, agreed-to in the presence of a magistrate, is valid; the fact that the employee was unaware that the superintendent was under investigation for child molestation does not amount to concealment of a fact material to this case. The employee's refusal to comply with court orders to sign the agreement left the court with little choice but to dismiss her claims, causing forfeiture of a substantial settlement.

This appeal involved a constitutional challenge to the 2008 Georgia Charter Schools Commission Act ("Act"), OCGA 20-2-2081 et seq. Appellants, local school systems whose 2009 and 2010 complaints were consolidated by the trial court, contended, inter alia, that the Act was unconstitutional because it violated the "special schools" provision in the Georgia Constitution of 1983. The court held that the Act was unconstitutional where the constitution embodied the fundamental principle of exclusive local control of general primary and secondary public education ("K-12") and where the Act clearly and palpably violated Art. VIII, Sec. V, Par. VII(a) by authorizing a state commission to establish competing state-created general K-12 schools under the guise of being "special schools." The court's holding rendered it unnecessary to address appellants' remaining constitutional challenges to the Act.

The Harrisburg School District No. 6 and the Board of Education (the District) appealed an order from the circuit court that granted Appellee Byron Neal's motion for summary judgment. Mr. Neal was elected to one of five positions on the District's board of directors. His term did not expire until September, 2014. In February, 2010, the Weiner School District faced declining enrollment, and as a result, the Harrisburg and Weiner Districts entered into an agreement for an administrative annexation of the two districts. Mr. Neal was present at the February, 2010 meeting of the Harrisburg board of directors and voted in favor of the annexation. In March, an interim school board was formed from the annexed districts. The Harrisburg District chose its interim board members by selecting four of its five members to serve. Mr. Neal lost his position. In June, Mr. Neal filed his complaint with the circuit court to stop the District from removing him as a board member. On appeal to the Supreme Court, the District argued that state law gave it the authority to agree on how the board of directors would be staffed, and therefore the circuit court erred in granting Mr. Neal summary judgment. The Supreme Court found no error by the circuit court and affirmed the grant of summary judgment to Mr. Neal.

A student reported to her aunt, a member of the school board (plaintiff), that she had seen a teacher hugging another student. The investigation ended because the teacher and minor student denied the incident and the plaintiff raised concerns about the reporting student's credibility. More than a year later, a police officer saw the teacher and the minor student in a sexual encounter and the teacher was arrested. A copy of the report on an investigation that followed, containing plaintiff's assertions about her niece's credibility, was leaked to the press during a school board election. The district court dismissed claims under 42 U.S.C. 1983. The Third Circuit affirmed, holding that there is no Fourteenth Amendment right to privacy with respect to the information at issue. Plaintiff may not have intended wide-dissemination of her opinion but she volunteered it to others and it did not concern autonomy and independence in personal decision-making.

Nearly a decade ago, petitioners, a state child protective services worker and a county deputy sheriff, interviewed then 9-year-old S.G. at her Oregon elementary school about allegations that her father had sexually abused her. Her father stood trial for that abuse but the jury failed to reach a verdict and the charges were later dismissed. S.G.'s mother subsequently sued petitioners on S.G.'s behalf for damages under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging that the in-school interview breached the Fourth Amendment's proscription on unreasonable seizures. The Ninth Circuit held that petitioners' conduct violated the Fourth Amendment but that they were entitled to qualified immunity from damages liability because no clearly established law had warned them of the illegality of the conduct. Although judgment was entered in petitioners' favor, they petitioned the Court to review the Ninth Circuit's ruling that their conduct violated the Fourth Amendment. At issue was whether government officials who prevailed on grounds of qualified immunity could obtain the Court's review of a court of appeals' decision that their conduct violated the Constitution. Also at issue was, if the Court could consider cases in this procedural posture, did the Ninth Circuit correctly determine that this interview breached the Fourth Amendment. The Court held that it could generally review a lower court's constitutional ruling at the behest of a government official granted immunity but could not do so in this case for reasons peculiar to it. The case had become moot because the child had grown up and moved across the country and so would never again be subject to the Oregon in-school interviewing practices whose constitutionality was at issue. Therefore, the Court did not reach the Fourth Amendment question in this case and vacated the part of the Ninth Circuit's opinion that decided the Fourth Amendment issue.

Plaintiffs sued defendants, the board of education of the town of Watertown ("board"), the town of Watertown ("town"), and two teachers employed by the board, claiming that, as a result of defendants' negligence, one plaintiff severely injured her foot at a school dance sponsored by the board. At issue was whether the trial court improperly granted defendants' motion to strike the claims on the grounds that negligence claims against the town and board were barred by the doctrine of governmental immunity and did not come within the scope of the statutory waiver of government immunity set forth in General Statutes 52-557n; that the claims against the two teachers were barred because section 52-557n did not create a cause of action against individual municipal employees; and that, in the absence of a common law negligence claim against the teachers, there was no basis for an indemnification claim pursuant to General Statutes 7-465. The court held that the trial court properly granted defendants' motion to strike count one as to the town and the board because they were immune from suit pursuant to 52-557n(a)(2)(B) and properly determined that section 52-557n did not authorize suit against individual government employees. The court also held that the trial court improperly granted the motion to strike the first count of the complaint as to the two teachers and the entire second count seeking payment from the town and the board pursuant to section 7-465 on the ground that plaintiffs had not alleged common law negligence against the teachers. The court further held that the trial court's ruling could be affirmed on the alternate ground that the teachers were immune from liability under the doctrine of qualified immunity. Accordingly, the judgment was affirmed.

Plaintiffs sued defendant in state court alleging that defendant violated a number of its statutory and common-law duties while managing plaintiffs' assets. Defendant filed a notice of removal with the district court, arguing that the diversity-of-citizenship jurisdiction statute, 28 U.S.C. 1332(a)(1), gave the district court original jurisdiction over the action. At issue was whether the district court erroneously granted plaintiffs' motions to remand to state court. The court held that, after considering plaintiffs' relative lack of Independence from the State of Missouri as well as the potential impact that a money judgment in plaintiffs' favor could have on the state's treasury, the court found that plaintiffs were merely an arm of the state and not "citizens" for purposes of section 1332(a)(1). Therefore, defendant failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the district court had original jurisdiction over the case and the district court's orders to remand the case to state court were affirmed.