A federal judge has ruled a far northwest suburban couple whose son was accused by a teacher of displaying a gun during an online high school class can’t bring a lawsuit over what they claim amounted to illegal home surveillance.
Judge Iain Johnston issued an opinion July 7 halting, for now, a complaint from Christopher and Lindsay Sharp, who sued Crystal Lake Community High School District 155, school officials, the village of Lake in the Hills, its police department and a police officer.
According to Johnston, a teacher at Crystal Lake South High School, identified as Aimee Memeti, believed she saw the Sharps’ child holding a gun during an online class. She reported her observation to Sean Scotty, then a dean, who contacted the student’s guidance counselor, who had been in touch with Lindsay Sharp on an unrelated matter. Lindsay told her husband about the accusations. Christopher Sharp then told his wife the child had no access to a gun. Christopher Sharp then called Scotty to explain there was no gun in the home.
U.S. District Judge Iain Johnston
“Despite the assurances,” Johnston wrote, Scotty contacted Lake in the Hills police, who dispatched four patrol units. Officer Louis Zenati met the family outside the home. The Sharps assured Zenati their child didn’t have a real gun and referred police to their attorney.
After District 155 informed the Sharps their child would be excluded from remote learning until they met with administration, the family met with a school administrator, identified as Kristen Davis, who informed them the student was suspended. The Sharps appealed the suspension, which was revoked and expunged. They then sued in August 2021, ultimately filing an amended complaint alleging violations of their personal rights, rooted in the position that remote learning amounts to illegal surveillance and that they never consented to the use of audio and video conferencing from within their home.
The school and village defendants moved to dismiss the Sharps’ complaint both for lack of jurisdiction and failure to state a claim. Johnston said the defendants argued the amended complaint merely restates the original, in which the student was the only party identified as suffering a legal injury. He rejected that position, noting “the clear purpose” of the amended complaint showed the parents properly situated as plaintiffs.
However, Johnston continued, the village and school defendants successfully argued the Sharps failed to state a claim.
“The police department is not a suable entity because it is merely a subdivision of the village itself rather than an independent governmental body,” Johnston wrote, dismissing the department with prejudice because no amendment could correct that error.
The Sharps’ Fourth Amendment claims failed because none of their allegations reference any seizure, “let alone an unreasonable one,” Johnston wrote. The family didn’t allege officers compelled them to speak or barred them from leaving, the officers never entered or searched the home. That leaves only the video conference as a plausible violation, a position Johnston also rejected.
Johnston explained several U.S. Supreme Court opinions established schools are entitled to balance their need to maintain a learning environment against any individual privacy rights and therefore don’t have the same probable cause obligations as a law enforcement agency when initiating a search. He also said the school defendants contended remote learning wasn’t devised for the purpose of exploring anyone’s home and noted the commonsense use of online technology during Covid-19 mitigations.
“During the pandemic, students from across the country were removed from physical classrooms and placed in virtual environments,” Johnston wrote. “The only possible way teachers could continue to maintain control of the classroom and to ensure the attendance of their students was to have them turn their cameras on. Otherwise, students could just walk away, and the teacher would never know.”
He further said the complaint didn’t allege school staff stipulated camera positioning, meaning any student could have controlled what school staff saw of the inside of their home.
The Sharps’ allegations of due process rights violations also failed for lack of substance. Johnston noted the couple, acting without an attorney, “mention privacy rights, including the right to family integrity and decision making, but merely observing that federal law prohibits a course of action does not constitute a plausibly stated claim.” Their equal protection claim was similarly flawed.
Johnston dismissed the claims without prejudice, offering the Sharps a chance to amend the complaint to include additional details and address the deficiencies the judge outlined. This could include their hopes to pin municipal liability on the village. The judge gave the Sharps until Aug. 5 to try again.
The Sharps are representing themselves in the case.
The school defendants are represented by attorneys Babak Bakhtiari and Kevin P. McKeown, of Hodges, Loizzi, Eisenhammer, Rodick & Kohn, of Arlington Heights.
Lake in the Hills defendants have been represented by attorneys Alison M. Harrington and Cara M. Rafanelli, of Best, Vanderlaan & Harrington, of Chicago.