FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

December 17, 2013

Parents React to Judge’s Ruling in Mercer Island School District Discrimination Case

In a narrowly circumscribed, five-page ruling, that took nearly five months to craft, King County Superior Court Judge James E. Rogers reaffirmed in part, and reversed in part, Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Michelle C. Mentzer’s order finding that the Mercer Island School District discriminated against a student in its handling of an October 2011 complaint of racial discrimination. Copies of both judges’ orders may be found at http://bulli.es/Rulings.

Characterizing some of the District’s actions in response to the student’s complaint of harassment as “comically incompetent,” Judge Rogers’ order concluded that while the District had behaved in a “negligent” manner, that negligence did not rise to the level of deliberate indifference to the student’s plight, given the facts of the case. The Judge also reaffirmed the ALJ’s findings that the student was subjected to “severe and pervasive” racial harassment within the Mercer Island School District. The District’s total legal expenditures in the matter currently exceed $130,000. The District’s legal billing may be found at http://bulli.es/LegalBilling.

The parents of the student who filed the initial complaint said that “We are obviously disappointed in the ruling because the District was clearly negligent in its handling of our son’s complaint of discrimination, and it admitted to procedural wrongdoing, but it seems that in the opinion of this particular judge, flouting the administrative codes put in place to protect students from this type of deleterious behavior is not enough to constitute deliberate indifference. We feel very strongly that the District’s handling of our son’s complaint exacerbated the severe and pervasive racial harassment that he incurred, and that ought to be sufficient for a finding of deliberate indifference.”

The District’s appeal brief argued that its response to the student’s discrimination was both timely and effective and that the racial discrimination that the student suffered was neither severe nor pervasive, but Judge Rogers found that the student had suffered in a racially hostile environment and that the District’s errors in handling the student’s documented complaints were negligent, although not deliberately indifferent. The parties now have the option of filing a motion for reconsideration of the Judge’s order and/or appealing the decision to the Washington State Court of Appeals.

The parents, for their part, will join other parents in a meeting with Superintendent of Public Instruction, Randy Dorn, in Olympia on Thursday, December 19, to request that Judge Rogers’ decision be appealed directly to the State Supreme Court. OSPI, which was also a party to the appeal and argued that the “deliberate and indifferent” standard should not apply to appeals for administrative remedies such as the one the parents sought, will be working with the Assistant Attorney General Justin Kjolseth to revise school district guidelines for handling discrimination complaints to explicitly reflect that “negligence” is the standard for culpability. “But revising the Guidelines may not be sufficient, because the District actively ignored guidance from OSPI and Judge Rogers’s ruling endorses that behavior,” said the parents. “That’s why we think OSPI should appeal the decision.”

 

The parents have launched a website called bulliesofmercerisland.org to reach out to other parents who have been similarly affected.

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