VT Supreme Court says schools can be sued when students harrass students

[Thom Little]

Students can sue their schools under provisions of a state anti-discrimination law if they're subjected to harassment by other students, the Vermont Supreme Court said on Friday.

And the court established standards for how those cases should be judged in the future, requiring a student to go through established school channels for resolving problems before going to court, unless there's a valid reason why that's not possible.

The court said it was establishing a middle ground for judging future cases of student-to-student harassment based on recent amendments to state statutes enacted by the Legislature.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court, which threw out a lawsuit filed by Celeste Washington, who sued Harwood Union High School in 2001 under provisions of the state's public accommodations act. That law requires equal access to public accommodations, including schools, regardless of a person's race, creed, color, national origin, marital status, sex or sexual orientation.


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