State top court to decide students’ rights issue

The California Supreme Court, in a Bay Area case, has agreed to decide a question of students’ rights that has remained unsettled for more than 60 years: whether public schools can be sued for damages under a state antidiscrimination law.

The Unruh Civil Rights Act was sponsored in 1959 by future Assembly Speaker Jesse Unruh and was a forerunner of similar laws in other states. It applies to businesses that serve the public and allows suits for discrimination based on race, sex, religion, disability and other grounds that have been added over the years, including sexual orientation and immigration status.

Victims can seek damages, tripled in some cases, with at least $4,000 in damages required for each denial of access to the disabled, punitive damages for intentional rights violations, and attorneys’ fees. The law applies to suits against private schools, and some courts have interpreted “businesses” broadly enough to cover public schools as well, while others have disagreed.

One rejection came in November from the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco, in the case of a mentally disabled teenager who said he suffered repeated sexual assaults from fellow students and staff at De Anza High School in Richmond. His lawyer said the West Contra Costa Unified School

District agreed to settle the case for $3.725 million, but insisted on resolving the legal issue, even though damages were no longer at stake in the case.

“Public school districts are not business establishments,” Justice Kathleen Banke said in the appeals court’s 30 ruling. She said public schools are still “subject to stringent antidiscrimination laws,” both state and federal, but not to the Unruh Act, which covers only private businesses.

Although the youth has settled his suit, he and his lawyer appealed the ruling to the state’s high court. Last week, the court unanimously granted review of the case, removing the appellate ruling from the books as a precedent for other courts and setting the stage for a resolution of the issue.

A court filing supporting the youth by the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Center for Youth Law and the legal aid group Public Counsel, said most of California’s public school students belong to a group protected by the Unruh Act and therefore potentially affected by the case.

“The Unruh Act provides critical remedies for victims of discrimination” and gives them access to legal advocates, the groups said.

State education laws also allow students to sue a school for discrimination. But those laws do not allow the same level of damages as the Unruh Act or require a school district to reimburse the student for attorneys’ fees after losing the case, said Micha Star Liberty, lawyer for the youth in the Richmond case.

“In California we have great protections (for victims of discrimination) but not in public schools” unless the Unruh Act applies, Liberty said. “The issue impacts over 1 million special education students in California’s public schools and their ability to assert rights under our state’s strongest civil rights statute.”

Lawyers for the school district could not be reached for comment.

The youth, identified as Brennon B., had been diagnosed as severely autistic and was a 14yearold special education student at De Anza in 2012 when he was sexually assaulted by another mentally disabled student in a restroom, his lawsuit said. Over the next three years, the suit said, Brennon was assaulted numerous times, including four times by a school district employee who was later criminally prosecuted.

After Brennon’s initial complaints, the suit said, the school agreed to assign a supervisor to accompany him to the restroom and on the school bus but failed to do so, and he was assaulted there.

In ruling that the Unruh Act did not apply to public schools, the appeals court noted that the original drafts of the 1959 law would have applied it to “all public or private” institutions, including schools. But after a series of amendments, the final version approved by the Legislature covered “all business establishments of every kind whatsoever.”

Federal courts in California have allowed Unruh Act suits against public schools. In 2019, U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg of San Francisco refused to dismiss a suit against the Mount Tamalpais Union High School District by the family of a student with physical and mental problems who hanged himself after his school failed to provide tutoring and other accommodations for a highpressure exam. The suit was later settled.

But the appeals court in Brennon’s case said pubic schools — though they may provide athletic facilities for members of the public and sell tickets to sporting events — cannot be considered “business establishments” by any reasonable definition. The state’s high court will now address that issue, with a hearing not yet scheduled.

“In California we have great protections (for victims of discrimination) but not in public schools” unless the Unruh Act applies.

Micha Star Liberty, lawyer for the youth in the Richmond case