A federal judge has ruled a northern Illinois school district did not violate the constitutional rights of a middle school student by failing to stop or prevent the student from being bullied by other students.
On June 30, U.S. District Judge Iain D. Johnston, in the Western Division of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, in Rockford, dismissed a lawsuit brought by the mother of a student at Clinton Rosette Middle School in DeKalb.
In that action, filed in 2020, plaintiff Dominique Henderson accused the DeKalb Community Unit School District 428 of doing too little to stop her son, identified only as A.H., from being repeatedly bullied at school, and while traveling to and from school.
U.S. District Judge Iain Johnston
According to the complaint, A.H. was bullied “on the playground, during the lunch hour, during third block class, in the school hallway after school, on the school bus,” and after he got off the school bus.
In her complaint, Henderson claimed the repeated bullying “caused A.H. physical harm, emotional and social setbacks, and emotional distress.”
In the complaint, Henderson asserted she notified DeKalb school officials about the bullying, but they “did nothing to stop it.”
She asserted the severity of the bullying, which occurred from 2018-2019, forced her to relocate her family to another school district.
Henderson then filed suit, asking the court to declare the school district had violated her son’s constitutional rights to equal protection and due process, under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Such claims are brought under federal law through what is known as the Monell doctrine. Stemming from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1978 decision in Monell v Department of Social Services of the City of New York, the Monell doctrine has been used to give plaintiffs, through federal civil rights law, the opportunity to collect damages from cities, school districts and other public bodies for the actions of their officers and officials.
In this case, Henderson asserted a Monell claim, arguing the school district should be held liable for the bullying, because the district allegedly failed to implement an anti-bullying policy; allegedly failed to train its staff to stop bullying; and allegedly did too little to protect her son from being bullied, denying him his rights to an equal opportunity to a public education.
Such Monell claims against public schools over bullying have become more commonplace in recent years in federal courts.
In that case, the boy’s mother has similarly argued the Wilmington school district had a constitutional obligation to prevent the boy’s fellow students from acting on their alleged bigotry and to prevent the bullying from continuing.
The case has survived an attempt by the Wilmington district to dismiss the lawsuit, with the judge in March 2020 pointing to a 2003 decision from the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which found that, while “school districts are not required to ‘remedy peer harassment,’” they also must not act “in a ‘clearly unreasonable manner that ‘amounts to deliberate indifference.’”
The Wilmington case remains pending. In an order issued May 19, the judge in that case ordered attorneys for both sides to discuss “current Monell jurisprudence” in any dispositive motions filed, as the case moves toward a potential trial in early 2022.
In the DeKalb case, however, Judge Johnston said Henderson’s claims against the DeKalb school district do not hold up.
Judge Johnston said the school district neither created the alleged harm to A.H., nor did the district “increase” the harm.
Although this Court is sympathetic to Henderson’s concerning allegations of school-sanctioned bullying and student-on-student violence, … the Fourteenth Amendment only protects A.H. from (the DeKalb school district’s) own actions, not from the actions of another student,” Judge Johnston wrote.
“… Failing to prevent the harm is simply not the same as creating or increasing the risk of harm, which is a fundamental requirement for this type of substantive due process claim,” the judge wrote.
Johnston dismissed Henderson’s claims with prejudice, meaning she cannot attempt to amend and refile her lawsuit. She can only appeal to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
Henderson has been represented in the case by attorney Antonio L. Jeffrey, of the firm of Jeffrey & Erwin, of Chicago.
The DeKalb district has been represented by attorneys Babak Bakhtiari and Kevin P. McKeown, of the firm of Hodges Loizzi Eisenhammer Rodick & Kohn, of Arlington Heights.