Sexual Harassment Lawyer Blawg

When I moved here from the City in 1990 I felt like I had died and gone to heaven. Wonderful open-minded people, great schools, a lovely community. The fact that I had to bring a lawsuit against a local employer--and a neighbor at that--tells you that racial discrimination can rear its ugly head anywhere. This did not take long to correct because most of our town stopped eating at the restaurant after the protest march. What protest march, you ask?

Seventeen magazine did a very sweet story about the case, because the plaintiff was a senior in high school when we brought suit. Abby was a friend and classmate of my daughter, and I could not have been more proud of Abby, my daughter and all her friends. They won this case with their protest march. After the march the town spontaneously staged a boycott.

This case was not brought principally to recover money damages. The case settled for a modest amount. One of our local papersreported that the restaurant owners learned an expensive lesson. A condition of settlement was that the restaurant consented to a Court order prohibiting it from discriminating again and to use best efforts to promote diversity in hiring in the future.

A civil rights lawsuit has received some assistance from the federal government. The United States Department of Justice has filed an amicus brief in a lawsuit brought by racial discrimination attorney Joshua Friedman on behalf of a group of Michigan high school students.

The plaintiffs, all of whom are black at a high school where only about 3% of the student body is black, endured a constant pattern of insults, abuse, and harassment from other students based on their race. This included insults, threats, physical altercations, and vandalism of the students' property. The plaintiffs complained to teachers and school administrators but received little to no support. The school enacted a racial discrimination policy in 2005, but the harassment continued.

The matter came to a head in the spring of 2006, when Assistant Principal Marla Philpot found a textbook in her office containing a "hit list" of black students with a series of threats. Philpot was the school's only black administrator at the time. In response to Philpot's discovery, the administration hired a team of consultants to evaluate the school's racial climate. After the 2005-06 school year, 15 black students transferred to another high school and several more dropped out.

The school's response was too little, too late for the plaintiffs and their parents, who hired the Law Offices of Joshua Friedman to pursue a discrimination claim. He filed the lawsuit on their behalf in October 2006. The suit claims that the school board violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race by organizations receiving federal funding, as well as the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The suit was brought under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, which allows individuals to sue government officials for constitutional violations. Specifically, the suit alleges that the school board and school officials greeted the plaintiffs' complaints with deliberate indifference.

Continue reading "Michigan High School Students Suing School District for Racial Discrimination Get Help From the U.S. Government" »

We discussed a peer racial harassment case that we were taking to trial in late 2009. The case was against the Lenape Valley Regional Board of Education in Sussex County, New Jersey. It involved a multi-racial teen named "E.L." who was subjected to racial slurs during his 13 months at Lenape Valley Regional High School. E.L.'s parents, Edward and Leeann Lee, claimed that even after the harassment was reported, the school did almost nothing to discipline the harassers or prevent future harassment. After E.L. was expelled from school for fighting with one harasser, his parents sued the school board for money damages, a finding that E.L. was expelled without due process, and a finding that the school board failed to remedy the racial harassment.

Since that time, the plaintiffs and defendants have reached a settlement.

Prior to the settlement, the defendants tried to have the case dismissed through a motion for summary judgment, however, the Court rejected their arguments, and ordered the case to trial.

Hopefully the settlement will allow E.L. and his family to move on with their lives, and E.L. to enroll in a school where he will not face racial harassment. E.L.'s case is far from the only one in which the school administrators failed to protect students from harassment and bullying. With an increase in the ways in which students can hurt one another -- through social media websites and Twitter, for instance -- it remains a challenge for an experienced school racial harassment attorney to determine whether to hold the school accountable for the students' behavior. In E.L.'s case, the harassment took place largely on school grounds, but future cases could involve conduct that is entirely online.

If you or someone you know is experiencing racial harassment, sexual harassment, don't hesitate to contact a seasoned school harassment attorney to help you file a claim against the offenders. No one should have to fear going to work or school every day.

We are in the final days before our pretrial conference in this peer racial harassment case heading to trial in Newark, New Jersey. In this case, against the Lenape Valley Regional Board of Education, and Lenape Valley Regional High School Principal Douglas deMarrais, our clients Edward and Leeann Lee sued to recover damages to their then-teenage multi-racial son, who was harassed at school. They brought claims under federal and state laws prohibiting discrimination in school.

In the lawsuit, the defendants admitted much of the conduct the plaintiffs alleged in their Complaint. In fact, the principal admitted that E.L. (the student) was subjected to "an inordinate number of incidents [of racial slurs]" during his 13 months at Lenape Valley Regional High School, where he was one of only a small percentage of minority students. During discovery in this case, Mr. deMarrais admitted that between November 2004 and January 2006, Leeann and Edward Lee complained of racial slurs made to their son on multiple occasions, many of which the school confirmed. Defendants admitted the Lees complained that during his Freshman year (November 2004 thought June 2005) their son "E.L." was called the "n" word on the school bus on at least three occasions by three different students, another racial slur by a student on the basketball team, and another racial slur by three girls; and between September 2005 and January 2006, their son was called "ghetto or gangster" by a student who had called him the "n" word the previous year, called the "n" word by a girl who had used the word towards their son the previous year, was told he would be "picking [the] cotton" of a Caucasian student, called the "n" word by that same student a week later, and called the "n" word by another student shortly after.

Continue reading "New Jersey school racial harassment case heading to trial" »