A federal judge from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania has dealt a blow to a student athlete and her parents, who sued a school district and several other defendants after a high school softball coach within the school district had an inappropriate sexual relationship with the student athlete. The judge, in granting the summary judgement motion of the defendants, found that the plaintiffs’ allegations that the defendants violated their daughter’s Constitutional rights, Title IX and other laws were without merit.
By way of background, the court noted that the Pennridge School District, which employed defendant Eric Romig, was unaware of the inappropriate relationship, and that a private school, Faith Christian Academy, that had previously forced Romig to resign due to allegations of sexual harassment had never reported those allegations to outside authorities.
The court then turned to the Pennridge defendants’ motion for summary judgment on the plaintiffs’ claims, which centered, specifically, on Section 1983, Title IX, and willful misconduct.
The plaintiff’s claim brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleged that the coach engaged in “verbal and physical sexual abuse and harassment.” This, she alleged, was a violation of her Fourteenth Amendment due process right to bodily integrity. “It is well-established that physical sexual abuse at the hands of school staff violates a student’s due process rights,” wrote the court, citing Stoneking v. Bradford Area Sch. Dist., 882 F.2d 720, 727 (3d Cir. 1989). However, to show that a municipality is liable, a plaintiff “must demonstrate that the violation of rights was caused by the municipality’s policy or custom.” Thomas v. Cumberland Cnty., 749 F.3d 217, 222 (3d Cir. 2014) (citing Monell, 436 U.S. at 691).
“In an attempt to meet the Monell causal standard, the plaintiffs have set forth two theories of section 1983 liability: failure to train and state-created danger. The plaintiffs’ failure-to-train theory alleges that Romig’s lack of sexual harassment training at Pennridge was the moving force behind his alleged violation of E.N.’s constitutional rights. Their state-created danger theory alleges that assigning Romig to coach the softball team created a danger that ultimately led to the deprivation of E.N.’s Constitutional rights.”
The court noted that the plaintiff’s failure-to-train section 1983 theory “relies on the fact that Romig did not receive any sexual harassment prevention training at Pennridge.” However, the court reasoned that the “unlawful and inappropriate behavior” is not sufficiently related to “his assigned duties as a coach. … In sum, the plaintiffs have failed to meet both the deliberate indifference and causation elements of a failure-to-train section 1983 claim.”
Similarly, the state-created danger claim fell short, too, since the plaintiff failed to show that “the harm ultimately caused was foreseeable and fairly direct,” and that “a state actor acted with a degree of culpability that shocks the conscience.” Bright v. Westmoreland Cnty, 443 F.3d 276, 281 (3d Cir. 2006)
The court granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment on Title IX because there was “no evidence that any (Pennridge) coach, teacher or administrator had knowledge of the relationship between Romig and (the plaintiff), prior to Romig’s arrest,” which is a requirement pursuant to Gebser v. Lago Vista Indep. Sch. Dist., 524 U.S. 274, 290, 118 S. Ct. 1989, 141 L. Ed. 2d 277 (1998)
Turning to the plaintiffs’ allegation that school officials exhibited “willful misconduct … when they decided not to take any steps to investigate, train, monitor, or fire Romig after learning of his issues at Faith Christian,” the court found that the individual defendants were shielded “from state tort suits unless their acts ‘constituted a crime, actual fraud, actual malice or willful misconduct.’ 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 8550,” none of which was present in the instant case.
Finally, the court considered Faith Christian‘s motion for summary judgment involving the plaintiffs’ negligence claims.
“The issue before the Court … is whether their conduct exposes them to civil liability for (1) common-law negligence, or (2) negligence per se arising from an alleged violation of Pennsylvania’s mandatory child abuse reporting statute?”
The answer was no.
Elaborating, the court wrote that Faith Christian “was informed that an adult — Romig — was engaged in inappropriate sexual communication with a student. Faith Christian did not report these allegations to authorities, and Romig later sexually abused another student who was not associated with Faith Christian.” Pennsylvania law, according to the court, “does not allow negligence liability to extend to Faith Christian for Romig’s subsequent abuse of a minor who has no connection to Faith Christian.”
The court ruled similarly on the negligence per se claim, noting that E.N. “was not enrolled as a student at Faith Christian and had no connection to the school. Thus, the claim falls “outside of the group of individuals that the statute at issue is designed to protect.”
James Nace and April Nace as Guardians of E.N., a minor v. Pennridge School District et al.; E.D Pa.; CIVIL ACTION NO. 15-333, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 60244; 5/6/16
Attorneys of Record: (for plaintiffs) David J. Groth, Lead Attorney, Hornstine Pelloni & Hornstine LLC, Philadelphia, PA; Louis F. Hornstine, Lead Attorney, Hornstine Pelloni & Hornstine, LLC, Philadelphia, PA. (for defendants) Robert M. Cox, Lead Attorney, Erin N. Kernan, Joanne D. Sommer, Eastburn & Gray PC, Doylestown, PA.; Carla E. Connor, Donnelly & Associates, P.C., Conshohocken, Pa; David Salazar, Joseph J. Santarone, Jr., Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin, Philadelphia, PA; Jonathan J. Russell, Drake Hileman And Davis, Doylestown, PA.
