Youngstown Daily Legal News

School board not responsible for school's culture of bullying, hazing

ANNIE YAMSON
Special to the Legal News
Published: June 15, 2016

A federal court of appeals recently absolved the Huber Heights City Schools Board of Education of responsibility for a culture of violence at a high school.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Apeals considered the case out of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio in which plaintiff Donald Richardson sued the board of education after the assault of his son, K.R.

Richardson claimed that K.R. was sexually assaulted by fellow students with the tacit permission of an assistant baseball coach and that the school board violated the child’s rights by creating and being deliberately indifferent to a culture of sexualized violence at Wayne High School.

The district court granted summary judgment to the school board, leading Richardson to appeal to the 6th Circuit court.

But the higher court upheld the decision, citing Richardson’s failure to establish municipal liability but acknowledging the existence of a disturbing culture at the high school.

The federal court’s summary of the case states that K.R. was assaulted by two upperclassmen who shoved him into corner, held him down and inserted a finger into his anus.

One of the perpetrators, B.C., testified at trial that, after an argument involving K.R. at a weightlifting session, assistant coach Jonathan Soukup told B.C. to “take care of it.”

B.C. apparently took the command as permission to use whatever means he deemed necessary to resolve the problem.

In fact, B.C. testified that he believed his actions would serve “kind of like an attitude adjustment” and that he acted “as part of (his) responsibility as an upperclassman on the baseball team.”

B.C. explained that although his coach never told him what specific actions to take, he assaulted K.R. because “in past experience, that’s what happened to (him).”

Considering the evidence, the appellate court agreed with Richardson that there was “significant evidence to support a jury’s conclusion that some coaches at Wayne High School, or at least Coach Soukup, tolerated a culture of student-on-student hazing in order to encourage team obedience and respect.”

Writing on behalf of the court of appeals, Chief Judge R. Guy Cole noted that a jury could conclude that Soukup’s remark to “take care of it” created a special danger or increased risk for K.R.

“Richardson primarily argues that bullying and hazing were common at Wayne, such that the risk created by Soukup’s comment ‘was so obvious’ that he must have understood it,” Cole wrote.

The school board responded that Richardson’s claim was “a utopian exercise in wishful thinking” and that “kids are going to be kids.”

“That may be true,” Cole wrote. “But a jury would also be justified in concluding that school officials turned a blind eye to hazing at Wayne — particularly within its athletic programs — to the extent that a comment from a coach inviting upperclassmen to ‘take care of’ a problem elicited sexual assault as a preferred alternative to outright violence.”

Despite the fact that Richardson could successfully prove the culture of violence at the school, the appellate court held that he could not prove that the school board had anything to do with it.

“Richardson offers no argument or evidence in support of municipal liability,” Cole wrote. “Moreover, Richardson cannot show that the board acted with deliberate indifference.”

The appellate panel pointed to evidence of the board’s prior, successful responses to instances of bullying and to the fact that, after the incident, K.R.’s assailants were “swiftly punished.”

“Put simply, there is no evidence in the record that the board could foresee that Soukup or any coach at Wayne would authorize upperclassmen to sexually assault underclassmen as a method of reinforcing team discipline,” Cole wrote. “Accordingly, we need not draw the unreasonable inference that the board should have foreseen it.”

Since the board could not be held liable under the evidence, the court of appeals affirmed the ruling of the district court granting it summary judgment.

Judges Eric Clay and Julia Gibbons concurred.

The case is cited Richardson v. Huber Heights City Sch. Bd., case No. 15-4036.

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