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Safety Law News for July 25, 2024

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— In New York, the Supreme Court, Appellate Division reversed the dismissal of a case bought by parents of  student who “was repeatedly sexually abused by a teacher while attending an elementary school.”  The parents alleged that the school, “negligently failed to prevent the abuse.”  The lower court dismissed the claim of the parents, holding that the school “did not have actual or constructive notice of the teacher’s alleged propensity to engage in sexual abuse or of the abuse that the teacher allegedly perpetrated.”  The appellate court reversed, sending the case on to a jury for trial.  The standard for determining liability is whether the school knew or should have known of the employee’s propensity for the conduct which caused the injury…(and whether) the school’s supervision and protection (is comparable) to that of a parent of ordinary prudence placed in the same situation and armed with the same information.”  The appellate court ruled that a jury must sort out these issues, particularly “given the frequency of the alleged abuse, which occurred over the entirety of a school year, and always occurred inside the same classroom during the school day.”  At trial, the school will be given the opportunity to “demonstrate, prima facie, that their supervision of both the teacher and the (student) was not negligent.”  Sayegh v. City of Yonkers

— In Texas, the “former school police officer who was part of the slow law enforcement response to the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges of failing to take action as a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers inside a fourth-grade classroom.  The officer “responded to the scene but then waited more than 70 minutes to confront the shooter inside the school.”

— In Oregon,  a member of the Medford School Board is concerned that on the issue of campus safety “there’s a breakdown of trust in our community.”  Specifically, the board member believes that, “the district could do more to better track troublesome students and to take prevention more seriously.”  Data show that recently, “four firearms have been found at MSD” campuses.

— In Alabama, officials in Marshall County are attributing an 86 percent decrease in vape confiscation to a district-wide policy.  Under the policy, students “caught with vapes automatically get 10 days of in-school suspension and a summons to juvenile court among other punishments depending on the number of offenses.”  Officials believe that, “students are taking note of these punishments and perhaps maybe quitting the habit altogether.”

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Safety Law News for July 16, 2024

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— In Massachusetts, the United States District Court refused to apply immunity to educators in a case brought by parents of a child who committed suicide after relentless bullying by fellow students.  The court refused to dismiss claims based upon (1) an unconstitutional policy to “intentionally downgrade and misclassify bullying incidents,” (2) severe and pervasive racial harassment in violation of Title VI, (3) wrongful death, (4) retaliation in violation of the Frist Amendment when the student was “suspended multiple times in retaliation for reporting incidents of bullying.”  The court ruled that under Massachusetts law immunity does not apply because of the school’s “ineffective implementation of the Safety and Supervision Plan.”  The court noted that, “the Safety and Supervision Plan was an explicit agreement between (the student, parents, and the school) with the specific aim of securing her physical and emotional safety at school. As alleged, (the school) thereafter failed to secure (the student’s) physical and emotional safety, causing her to suffer a cumulative psychological toll…Ultimately, (the school’s) inability to protect (the student) drove her to stop attending…which compounded her psychological harm, leading to her suicide.”  Finally, as to the legal duty, the court held that, “under Massachusetts law, a public school owes a duty of reasonable care to a minor child when the school has actual knowledge of a previous suicide attempt, or when the student has stated plans or intentions to commit suicide of which the school has actual knowledge; in these circumstances a second suicide attempt is foreseeable.”  Doe v. City of Northampton

— In Tennessee, the legislature has enacted a new policy on teacher safety in Senate Bill 1943.  Under the policy, all public and charter schools are required to pay employees their full salary or average pay and full benefits if they were physically assaulted on the job and unable to work as a result. There were 1,918 cases of assault and 71 cases of aggravated assault against teachers and staff during the 2022-23 school year, according to the 2024 Tennessee Safe Schools Report.

— In Iowa, the legislature approved House File 2586 which adds legal protections for armed staff in schools.  Under its provisions, the law “provides qualified immunity from criminal or civil liability for all damages incurred pursuant to the application of reasonable force.”

— In North Carolina, officials in the Iredell-Statesville Schools are adding additional resources and training to address suicide prevention.  “From the use of anonymous reporting apps to monitoring students’ search histories to providing counseling for students and their families, the district has invested significant resources to identifying at-risk students and getting them help.”

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Safety Law News for July 12, 2024

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— In New York, the Supreme Court, Appellate Division reversed the dismissal of an injury case, sending it back to trial on the issue of the failure of the school to properly supervise its students.  The injury occurred when the student tripped and fell on a roadway defect that abutted a curb in a public street adjacent to the school on the way to school. The lower court granted summary judgment dismissing the case because the injury occurred away from school. In reversing the lower court, the appellate court held that “schools are under a duty to adequately supervise the students in their charge and they will be held liable for foreseeable injuries proximately related to the absence of adequate supervision… A school’s duty to supervise is generally viewed as being coextensive with and concomitant to its physical custody of and control over the child, and therefore, when that custody ceases because the child has passed out of the orbit of its authority in such a way that the parent is perfectly free to reassume control over the child’s protection, the school’s custodial duty also ceases…(But) while a school has no duty to prevent injury to schoolchildren released in a safe and anticipated manner, the school breaches a duty when it releases a child without further supervision into a foreseeably hazardous setting it had a hand in creating.”  Reversal was required because a genuine issue of material fact existed as to whether school operators breached duty of supervision because the roadway defect was located in area designated by school for pick-up and drop-off of children.  Levy v. City of New York

— In Virginia, the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services recently announced more than $30 million in grants and matching funds to support school security and school resource officers.

— In North Carolina, the Pitt County School Board unanimously approved the emergency use of naloxone in schools.  “The latest statistics show that between 2021 and 2022, Pitt County saw a steep increase in overall overdose deaths, increasing more than 65% during that time period.”

— In Alabama, “Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall announced the opening of the application process for the 2024 Alabama Safe Schools Initiative Awards. This award program aims to identify and recognize excellence and current trends in school safety across the state.”

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Safety Law News for July 2, 2024

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— In Massachusetts, the United States Court of Appeals upheld the validity of hate speech provisions in a public school dress code.  The issue arose when school district officials enforced the dress code to prevent students in two middle schools from wearing shirts which read “There Are Only Two Genders,” then from wearing shirts with words “Only Two” covered by tape on which was written “CENSORED.”  The lower court applied the case of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, ruling that educators had authority to enforce the dress code “to protect against the invasion of the rights of other students to a safe and secure educational environment.”  The appellate court affirmed because of “an extensive body of federal court caselaw that applies Tinker in circumstances — akin to those present in this case — involving passive and silently expressed messages by students that do not target specific students but that assertedly demean other students’ personal characteristics, like race, sex, religion, or sexual orientation.”  The rule going forward is that educators, “must have some margin to make high-stakes assessments in conditions of inevitable uncertainty.”   The court went on to hold that, “we don’t think a school is required to prove that unless the speech at issue is forbidden serious consequences will in fact ensue… It is enough for the school to present facts which might reasonably lead school officials to forecast substantial disruption.”  The appellate court concluded that, “the message in this school context would so negatively affect the psychology of young students with the demeaned gender identities that it would poison the educational atmosphere.”  L.M. v. Town of Middleborough

— In North Carolina,  the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office will no longer provide school resource officers to several public schools in the county. “This step was necessary because the sheriff’s office is short-staffed and had to eliminate certain assignments so they can have enough deputies to cover calls for service.”

— In Texas, the former Uvalde police chief has been indicted over the tactical response to the Robb Elementary shooting in January 2024.  The incident left 9 children and two teachers dead.  The Chief was indicted by a grand jury on 10 counts of felony child endangerment.

— In Iowa, a new school safety law increases the penalties for swatting.  “Swatting” is the act of making a prank call to 911 in an attempt to bring about the dispatch of a large number of armed police officers to a school.  Under SF 2161, “charges for swatting are bumped from a misdemeanor to a Class D Felony, which could come with up to five years in prison. If somebody is injured or even killed as a result of a swatting call, then that becomes a Class C Felony with a prison sentence of up to 10 years.”

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Safety Law News for June 27, 2024

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— In Missouri the Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed that school officials were liable for the injuries of a student who was struck by a passing car after unloading from a school bus.  The incident occurred when a substitute driver, left uninformed about the proper drop-off location, stopped the school bus at the wrong location.  This required students “to cross two lanes of traffic.”  A car struck a nine-year-old fourth-grade student and fled from the scene. The jury awarded the student $1.3 million in damages. The appellate court held that the rule of law is that, “to prevail on a negligence claim, the plaintiff must establish (1) the defendant owed a duty to him or her; (2) the defendant breached that duty; (3) causation; and (4) “injury” or “actual damages.”  Negligence occurred because, “providing school bus drivers sufficient information as to its students’ designated school bus stops, such as via the route sheet, was necessary to protect (students) from injury.”  The school argued that the “passing car driver’s conduct was an intervening cause breaking the causal connection between (student’s) injuries and (school’s) negligence.  The court disagreed.  The duty of the school “arose from the bus contract, by its own conduct, and its requirement to exercise due care to avoid foreseeable injury.”  As such, “the passing car driver’s conduct is not an intervening cause breaking the causal connection between (student’s) injuries and (school’s) negligence.”  Jackson v. First Student, Inc.

— In Washington State, the Seattle Superintendent has announced more rigorous policies to maintain campus safety.  These include: (1) Increasing SPS security and neighborhood safety organization patrols around buildings; (2) Requiring students to wear identification badges on campus; (3) Requiring clear backpacks by all students; (4) Closing campuses for lunch to keep students from venturing into the community.  The changes come in response to the death of Garfield High School Junior Amarr Murphy-Paine to gun violence.

— In Alabama, school officials are planning to deploy metal detectors on campuses after an incident in January 2024 in which “a student at Leflore High School … opened fire in the hallway, shooting two students.”

— In North Carolina, the Pitt County School Board is mandating naloxone use in schools “to combat overdoses on its campuses.” Officials says that, “first responders and school resource officers have already been allowed to carry Narcan…the new policy extends that to nurses and others who could not administer the medicine without a school board policy.”

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Safety Law News for June 19, 2024

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— In North Carolina, the Court of Appeals of North Carolina affirmed that a student’s statement to a group of fellow students that he was going to “shoot up the school” was not protected speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. This upheld the adjudication of the offense of Communicating a Threat to Commit Mass Violence on Educational Property, a felony under state law. The case arose out of an incident in which students reported to school officials that they heard a student say, “that he was going to shoot up the school,” and “I will bring the guns.” The court announced the rule of law as one in which “under the First Amendment, the State may not punish an individual for speaking based upon the contents of the message communicated, (but) there are limited exceptions to this principle, as the State is permitted to criminalize certain categories of expression which, by their very nature, lack constitutional value. One such limited exception is when the criminalized speech constitutes a “true threat.” Under this exception, “true threats’ encompass those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals. The speaker need not actually intend to carry out the threat. Rather, a prohibition on true threats protects individuals from the fear of violence and from the disruption that fear engenders, in addition to protecting people from the possibility that the threatened violence will occur.” Applying this standard to the dispute, the court held that the student’s statement “was objectively threatening, supporting application of the true threat exception to the free speech protections of the First Amendment.” The appellate court affirmed the adjudication, concluding that, “the student-witnesses in this case did not testify they thought (the student) was joking or that his statement might have been perceived as a joke. To the contrary, the evidence was that (the student) sounded serious. The evidence further demonstrated (the student’s) comment elicited the further comment from a student offering to “bring the guns,” which was overheard by the third student-witness and, itself, caused her alarm….The evidence tended to reflect that, in the context of a school setting, (the student) threatened to conduct a school shooting in a serious tone and students overhearing the threat took it seriously and were scared. Matter of D.R.F.

— In Washington State, “Seattle’s Interim Chief of Police…is advocating for the return of School Resource Officers (SROs), saying they will create a safer environment for students.” In the school year just ended, “69 teenagers have been charged with felony gun offenses.” A prosecutor for King County also confirmed that in recent weeks “we had two children in possession of firearms in two different schools in two different districts, one of which was a firearm with an extended magazine—it was a ghost gun.” The community is taking note of these comments after the fatal lunchtime shooting of a student at a high school on June 6.

— In Nebraska, the board for the Omaha Public Schools is considering a new agreement with the Omaha Police Department that will “increase pay for associate school resource officers by $2 an hour, so each SRO would make $40 an hour during the 2024-25 school year.

— In Tennessee, the Tennessee Governor signed into law House Bill 322, requiring school emergency drills and better collaboration between schools and law enforcement. The new law also, “allocates $230 million for enhanced safety, including $30 million to place school resource officers in every public school, $54 million toward security upgrades for public and private schools, $140 million to place Homeland Security agents in every county to coordinate school security responses, and $8 million to provide new school-based behavioral help staff.”