SAN FRANCISCO (Legal Newsline) – A civil rights law can’t be used by a former special-education student who sued his school district for multiple sexual assaults.
The California Supreme Court made that ruling Aug. 4 in a lawsuit brought by a young man known as Brennon B., who sued the West Contra Costa Unified School District. His lawyers sought to bring claims under the Unruh Civil Rights Act, as Brennon has developmental disabilities.
Being allowed to pursue claims under the Unruh Act would have brought the statutory penalties and attorneys fees available under it into play.
“The statutory text of the act, its purpose and history, and our prior caselaw all indicate that public schools, as governmental entities engaged in the provision of a free and public education, are not ‘business establishments’ within the meaning of the Act,” Justice Joshua Groban wrote.
“To the contrary, they make clear that the Act was not enacted to reach this type of state action.”
Brennon attended De Anza High School from 2012 to 2016, where he was enrolled in the special education program. He has autism, low verbal skills and mental and cognitive impairment, the decision says, and his mental and emotional capacity while at the school was the same of a six- or seven-year-old child.
In 2012, another student sexually assaulted Brennon in a bathroom, leading to a lawsuit the following year and an amendment to his education plan that required continuous supervision.
When he was kissed on a school bus in 2013, the plan was again changed. He now required supervision on the bus, too, but in 2014 he was left on his own on the bus and the same student kissed him again.
Plus, an aide assigned to supervise him forced Brennon into oral sex at least four times between 2012-2014, ultimately confessing and being charged with multiple felonies. In 2015, he was sexually and physically assaulted by other students three times when left unsupervised on campus.
All of this led his guardian to file a new lawsuit alleging several claims like intentional infliction of emotional distress while also pushing a theory under the Unruh Act, which was enacted in 1959 in response to courts ruling California’s existing public accommodation statute didn’t apply to various private businesses
The Act was amended in 1992 to state violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act would also constitute violation of the Unruh Act.
The two sides have already settled the case but appeals were heard to decide issues of statewide importance. Brennon’s side had to clear the hurdle that the act applied to “all business establishments of every kind whatsoever.”
“A public school district engaged in the task of educating its students does not easily fit within these definitions,” Groban wrote.
“We do not dispute that a school district provides a service to members of the public, as Brennon argues, but a school district’s provision of public education is not generally understood as being carried out in the commercial, transactional manner that is characteristic of a ‘business establishment.’”
The act imposes a statutory damage floor of $4,000 and can call for triple the amount of actual damages, as well as attorneys fees for plaintiffs.