Davis v. Monroe County Bd. of Ed

In Davis v. Monroe County Bd. of Ed. (1999) 526 U.S. 629, the Supreme Court set forth the test for a school district's liability for discrimination in the form of student-on-student harassment. 3 A district is liable if it acts with deliberate indifference to known acts of harassment. (Id. at p. 633.) The harassment must be so severe, pervasive and objectively offensive that it effectively bars a victim's access to an educational opportunity or benefit, and a school district's deliberate indifference must subject the student to harassment. In other words, it must cause the students to undergo harassment or make them vulnerable to it. (Id. at pp. 633, 645.) Deliberate indifference can be found when a district's response to known discrimination "is clearly unreasonable in light of known circumstances." (Id. at p. 649.)