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School District Sex Assault Case Heading To Trial After Supreme Court Turns It Down

by

Reagan Reese on November 22, 2022

A Virginia school board’s sexual assault case is going to trial after the U.S. Supreme Court decided on Monday not to hear the board’s appeal, according to the Associated Press.

The Fairfax County School Board appealed a sexual assault case from 2018, saying the school should not be held accountable under Title IX for an alleged assault that happened on a school trip, according to the AP. The Supreme Court’s decision sends the case back to a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia.

“What a shame the school board wasted taxpayer dollars asking the Supreme Court to adopt positions the Fourth Circuit and the Department of Justice have called ‘absurd,’”Alexandra Brodsky, a lawyer for the plaintiff, said in a comment to the AP.

In 2018, a female student, listed under the name Jane Doe to protect her identity, filed a lawsuit alleging that a male student sexually assaulted her in 2017 while on a bus for a band trip, the AP reported. The school was acquitted of wrongdoing by a civil jury in 2019, who also decided the school had not been given “actual notice” of the assault.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the case in 2021 and found that the school had been given notice of the assault by the plaintiff, the AP reported. The school board then appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Because of the Supreme Court’s decision, the trial will restart and Doe will have to prove she was sexually assaulted and had told the school about the assault, the AP reported.

“Fairfax County Public Schools asked the high court to resolve these uncertainties because Congress never intended for schools to be privately sued for money damages when everyone agrees the harassment could not have been foreseen,” the school board said in a statement to the AP.

Fairfax County Public Schools and Brodsky did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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