Sexual Harassment Lawyer Blawg

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.

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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" »

Harassers abuse the positions of power they occupy, such as supervisor, or professor. Most of us are too afraid of the consequences to speak out. Those who do may be ostracized, disbelieved and face retaliation. But if we do not find the courage to speak out about civil rights violations, they continue.

Without people like Cameron Aulner who find the courage to fight we would have no civil rights. By standing up to a powerful adversary Cameron has made things better for all Edinboro University students. Read the Complaint.