In C.R. v. Eugene School Dist. 4J, published September 1, 2016, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment in favor of a school district in a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 case a seventh-grader brought against the district. The plaintiff and other seventh graders teased two disabled sixth-graders as they left school, in a city park that was adjacent to the schoolgrounds. The teasing escalated into sexual jokes that made the younger students uncomfortable. The school eventually gave the plaintiff a two-day suspension for sexual harassment, as well as lying about the incident to district administrators investigating the incident.
The 9th Circuit held that a student's First Amendment rights do not prevent a school from disciplining the student for speech off-campus under these circumstances. A school may act to protect its students' rights to leave campus freely without implicating speech in the broader community. Applying the standards for student speech on campus, sexually harassing speech may be disciplined because it interferes with the rights of other students to be secure. The informal procedures the school used for the two-day suspension did not violate procedural due process, since informal procedures may be used for suspensions of ten days or less. Finally, deeming the plaintiff's conduct "sexual harassment" did not violate his rights to substantive due process.
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