LISA FITZGERALD, et vir v. BARNSTABLE SCHOOL COMMITTEE et al. (555 U.S. 246)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided January 21, 2009 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 555 U.S. 246 · 129 S. Ct. 788
- Decided
- January 21, 2009
- Term
- October Term 2008
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Alito
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Alito delivered the opinion of the Court. The issue in this case of peer-on-peer sexual harassment is whether Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 86 Stat. 373, 20 U. S. C. § 1681(a), precludes an action under Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983, alleging unconstitutional gender discrimination in schools. The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held that it does. 504 F. 3d 165 (2007). We reverse. I Because this case comes to us on a motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), we assume the truth of the facts as alleged in petitioners’ complaint. During the 2000-2001 school year, the daughter of petitioners Lisa and Robert Fitzgerald was a kindergarten student in the Barnstable, Massachusetts, school system, and rode the bus to school each morning. One day she told her parents that, whenever she wore a dress, a third-grade boy on the school bus would bully her into lifting her skirt. Lisa Fitzgerald immediately called the school principal, Frederick Scully, who arranged a meeting later that day with the Fitzgeralds, their daughter, and another school official, Lynda Day. Scully and Day then questioned the alleged bully, who denied the allegations. Day also interviewed the bus driver and several students who rode the bus. She concluded that she could not corroborate the girl’s version of the events. The Fitzgeralds’ daughter then…
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