Fairfax Schools Sexual Assault Case Rejected By U.S. Supreme Court In Title IX Lawsuit

FAIRFAX COUNTY, VA — On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a motion by the Fairfax County School Board to take up a case involving a lawsuit filed by a former high school student over the school system's response to a sexual harassment incident that occurred while on a school trip.

The school system filed a petition of cert on Dec. 30, 2021, requesting the Supreme Court take up the case in order to answer two questions. The first was whether a student could file a lawsuit under Title IX if the student faced no subsequent harassment after the school was made aware of the original incident of harassment. The second was whether a school could avoid liability if its staff failed to recognize a report of sexual assault as an actual report of sexual assault.

"Fairfax County Public Schools asked the high court to resolve these uncertainties because Congress never intended for schools to be privately sued for money damages when everyone agrees the harassment could not have been foreseen, and did not occur once the school became involved," FCPS said, in a release on Monday. "In this case, both sides agree that FCPS could not have foreseen the incident between these two high-school students in March 2017, and that no harassment happened after school administration responded."

Related: US Supreme Court Filing Backs Ex-Fairfax Student's Title IX Lawsuit

Alexandra Brodsky, Jane Doe's attorney of record at the Supreme Court and a staff attorney at Public Justice, applauded the court's decision to decline FCPS' request to "gut Title IX."

"The Fourth Circuit got it right: there is no question Fairfax received multiple reports about her sexual assault, and a jury could find Fairfax’s response was clearly unreasonable," she said. "What a shame the School Board wasted taxpayer dollars asking the Supreme Court to adopt positions the Fourth Circuit and the Department of Justice have called 'absurd.'"

Monday's decision came nearly two months after U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar filed a brief in support of the Fairfax student's lawsuit. The court had asked the solicitor general to weigh in on the case.

“This Court’s precedents confirm that a school may be liable under Title IX for educational harms inflicted on a student by the school’s deliberate indifference to sexual harassment even when those harms do not include additional harassment," Prelogar said, in her brief.

The lawsuit claims that the former student, referred to in court records as "Jane Doe," was sexually assaulted by a 17-year-old male classmate while on a band trip to Indianapolis in March 2018. The victim was 16 at the time.

In Aug. 9, 2019, a jury found that Jane Doe had been sexually assaulted and "that the harassment was so severe, pervasive and objectively offensive, as to deprive her of educational opportunities," according to the U.S. Solicitor General.

However, the jury determined that FCPS was not liable because it could not find the school system had "actual knowledge" that the incident had occurred and didn't address whether school officials acted with "deliberate indifference" to the harassment Jane Doe reported, according to Public Justice.

"A jury never found that the school adequately responded to the harassment," Brodsky told Patch on Monday. "The jury got tripped up on what a different element — actual knowledge — meant. ... The Fourth Circuit and the district court correctly held that a jury could find that the school's response to Jane's report was clearly unreasonable. That it blamed and shamed Jane rather than providing her with the support that she needed to engage fully with the school's educational opportunities that are available to other students."

With Monday's decision by the Supreme Court, Brodsky said she and her client were expecting to have a new trial date in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia.

"Jane is ready for her new trial, and is confident she will prevail," Brodsky said, in a statement. "he question for Fairfax is whether it wants to risk a loss, and millions of dollars in attorneys’ fees, in order to force a young survivor to relive, yet again, traumatic events she is working to put behind her."

In its statement, the school system said that after hearing more than two dozen witnesses, a jury previously returned a verdict in its favor. "If the case is retried, FCPS expects to again show that its staff went to extraordinary lengths to provide support to the plaintiff after the incident."