finding that a teacher who sexually assaulted a student did not act under of color of state law, even where there was evidence that the teacher “had first befriended and shown a special interest in [the student] at school,” because the assaults occurred at the student’s home more than five months after the student withdrew from the school where the teacher taught and thus the teacher’s contacts with the student “were in no way part of his duties as a state employee, were not school-sponsored, and were not reported to any school official.”
How later courts described this case
- finding that a teacher who sexually assaulted a student did not act under of color of state law, even where there was evidence that the teacher “had first befriended and shown a special interest in [the student] at school,” because the assaults occurred at the student’s home more than five months after the student withdrew from the school where the teacher taught and thus the teacher’s contacts with the student “were in no way part of his duties as a state employee, were not school-sponsored, and were not reported to any school official.”
- finding school employee did not act under the color of state law because he first molested the student five months after the student withdrew from the school where the defendant taught, there was no evidence of physical sexual abuse occurring at the school, the school employee was not the student’s teacher “before, during, and after the sexual abuse,” and the school employee’s contacts with the student “were in no way part of his duties as a state employee, were not school- sponsored, and were not reported to any school official”
- holding that there was no nexus between official duties as former teacher and sexual assault where teacher molested student off campus, five months after student withdrew from school
- stating that “[u]nlike in Doe, Asher was not Juan’s teacher ‘before, during, and after’ the sexual abuse, nor was this wrongful conduct ‘on and off school grounds’ ”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
ON PETITION FOR REHEARING AND SUGGESTION FOR REHEARING EN BANC
April 7, 1997
PER CURIAM:
The two paragraphs at the end of Part A in the original opinion, 105 F.3d at 1048, should not be read to preclude a determination that, given a real nexus, school supervisors who are deliberately indifferent to a student’s constitutional liberty interest in her bodily integrity are themselves the state actors who perpetrated the constitutional tort, regardless of whether the individual who actually made illicit physical contact with the student was acting under color of state law.
The Petition for Rehearing is DENIED and no member of this panel nor judge in regular active service on the court having requested that the court be polled on Rehearing En Banc, (FRAP and Local Rule 35) the Suggestion for Rehearing Én Banc is also DENIED.