noting that “Agency principles [upon which Title VII liability is based] are useless in discussing liability for student-student harassment under Title IX, because students are not agents of the school board.... Therefore, even if employers owe to employees some sort of nondelegable duty to eliminate peer harassment in the workplace, ..., schools owe to students no comparable duty.” (emphasis added)
How later courts described this case
- noting that “Agency principles [upon which Title VII liability is based] are useless in discussing liability for student-student harassment under Title IX, because students are not agents of the school board.... Therefore, even if employers owe to employees some sort of nondelegable duty to eliminate peer harassment in the workplace, ..., schools owe to students no comparable duty.” (emphasis added)
- stating that Title VII was enacted pursuant to the Commerce Clause and § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment
- finding “Title IX, like Title VI, was enacted under Congress’ power to spend for the general welfare of the United States”
- holding a school district may not be held liable for student-on-student sexual harassment under Title IX
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
BLACK, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the Court’s judgment and, with the exception of Parts IIIB and IIIC, join in its opinion. I write separately only to respond to the dissent’s contention that the Court’s disposition contravenes the “plain meaning” of Title IX. It is axiomatic that the statutory language is the starting point for interpreting the meaning of a statute. Ardestani v. INS, 502 U.S. 129, 135 , 112 S.Ct. 515, 519 , 116 L.Ed.2d 496 (1991); United States v. McLemore, 28 F.3d 1160, 1162 (11th Cir.1994). If the statutory language is unambiguous, the courts must enforce the statute as written absent a clearly-expressed legislative intent to the contrary. United States v. Turkette, 452 U.S. 576, 580 , 101 S.Ct. 2524, 2527 , 69 L.Ed.2d 246 (1981); Consumer Product Safety Comm’n v. GTE Sylvania, Inc., 447 U.S. 102, 108 , 100 S.Ct. 2051, 2056 , 64 L.Ed.2d 766 (1980); RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. United States, 955 F.2d 1457, 1460 (11th Cir.1992). On the other hand, where the statutory language is ambiguous, then a court may look to legislative history in an effort to discern the intent of Congress. See Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd. v. United States, 108 F.3d 290, 293 (11th Cir.1997); *1407 United, States ex rel. Williams v. NEC Corp., 931 F.2d 1493 , 1498 (11th Cir.1991).
The present case requires us to decide whether Title IX prescribes liability for the failure of a school board to prevent a student from discriminating against a classmate on the basis of sex. The text of Title IX provides that “[n]o person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” 20 U.S.C. § 1681 (1994). As the dissent recognizes, “[t]he absolute prohibition contained in the text is framed solely in terms of who is protected.” The statute simply does not specify what relationship, if any, the perpetrator of an underlying act of sexual harassment must have to the federally-funded educational institution to trigger Title IX liability.
The dissent nevertheless divines from congressional silence an unambiguous endorsement of the proposition that “[t]he identity of the perpetrator is simply irrelevant.” Under this conception of Title IX, liability presumably would attach anytime the school board failed to prevent anyone — student, teacher, parent, neighborhood resident— from discriminating on the basis of sex to the extent that such action inhibited a student from realizing the full benefits of federally-funded education. In my view, the text of Title IX permits at least equally plausible constructions that would circumscribe liability more narrowly. Specifically, the text of Title IX may be interpreted to impose liability only when the school board or one of its agents bears direct responsibility for discriminating on the basis of sex, as would be the case had any of Lashonda Davis’ teachers participated in the sexual harassment she was forced to endure. The absence of any reliable textual indication regarding which of these constructions Congress envisioned invites consideration of legislative history and the congressional power from which the statute emanates in an effort to discover congressional intent. The Court’s approach thus represents an entirely appropriate effort to effectuate congressional will in the absence of unambiguous textual guidance, not, as the dissent appears to suggest, strident judicial refusal to enforce clearly expressed legislative intent.