finding that child bullies did not act under authority delegated by the school or exercise coercive power with significant encouragement from the school; and even if the school’s response to the bullying “may well have been . . . inadequate,” no constitutional remedy existed
How later courts described this case
- finding that child bullies did not act under authority delegated by the school or exercise coercive power with significant encouragement from the school; and even if the school’s response to the bullying “may well have been . . . inadequate,” no constitutional remedy existed
- concluding that school's failure to continue perpetrator's suspension, thus permitting perpetrator to return to school, could not be deemed an affirmative act for purposes of a substantive due process claim under the state-created danger theory
- stating that “every other Circuit Court of Appeals that has considered this issue in a precedential opinion has rejected the argument that a special relationship generally exists between public schools and their students” and citing Hasenfus
- explaining that the temporary suspension of a student did not make the children she had bullied more vulnerable to danger and that the school permitting the student to return after serving the suspension was not an affirmative act
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
NYGAARD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
More than twenty years ago, we took up the troubling appeal of two female high school students who had been sexually assaulted by seven male students in a classroom, during a graphic arts class. See D.R. v. Middle Bucks Area Vocational Technical School, et al., 972 F.2d 1364 , 1366 (3d Cir.1992). Despite compulsory education laws, we held that schools do not have an affirmative constitutional duty to protect students from the actions of third parties while they attend school. Id. at 1371-72.
I joined several of my colleagues in dissenting from that decision. Id. at 1377 (Sloviter, J., dissenting). I believed then that the Appellants had stated viable con *203 stitutional claims against the school district. My position has not changed, and today, I would hold the same in this case. I therefore dissent. 1
. My colleague, Judge Fuentes, has also written an opinion in dissent, which I agree with in toto and join.