A former high school student will get her day in court on her sexual harassment claim against the principal of her school, who she alleged had sexual harassed her, and her school, who she alleged had violated her rights by failing to stop the sexual harassment. Bennett & Belfort partner Eric R. LeBlanc and associate attorney Zachary H. Hammond, along with co-counsel Rachel Okun, won an important victory in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, affirming that high school administrators cannot ignore rampant sexual harassment of a student by a teacher or administrator and that sexually harassing a student violates that student’s constitutional right to equal protection.
On February 19, 2025, the First Court of Appeals issued its decision in Wadsworth v. Nguyen, in which it reversed summary judgment on the student’s claim for violation of Title IX against the school and the claim that the principal had violated her constitutional right to equal protection by sexually harassing her.
Bennett & Belfort’s client is a former student at a public high school in Maine, where she was sexually harassed by her principal over a two-year period. The student sued the school for failing to stop the sexual harassment, the principal, and a school social worker who had also failed to stop the principal.
The school moved for summary judgment to dismiss the Title IX claim, arguing that the school’s assistant principals, who were the only employees in the school with authority to stop the principal, had lacked knowledge of the sexual harassment. The trial court agreed with the school, finding that the student had not provided sufficient evidence from which a jury could conclude that the assistant principals knew of the principal’s behavior.
The principal moved for summary judgment on the student’s claim that he had violated her constitutional right to equal protection by sexually harassing her, which the trial court granted as it determined that a reasonable high school principal would not have known that non-physical sexual harassment of a student would violate the student’s constitutional right to equal protection.
The First Circuit reversed the trial court on both issues.
On the Title IX claim, the Appeals Court concluded that there was sufficient evidence for a jury to conclude that the assistant principals had knowledge of the principal’s conduct. Further, the Court concluded that knowledge under Title IX could be shown “if a reasonable jury could conclude that a school ‘ought to’ know that harassment is occurring — if [the school] had information that conveyed a substantial risk of ongoing harassment, that is enough regardless of whether the relevant school officials excused the conduct.”
The evidence showed that one of the assistant principals had known of the principal’s habit of pulling the student out of class, his use of sexualized nicknames for her, that she was working for him to pay off a car he had given her, that he wanted to invite her to live with him, and that the student and the principal communicated by text message.
The First Circuit also reversed summary judgment as to the principal. The Court found that the student had sufficiently shown that she was subjected to unwelcome harassment, on the basis of her sex, that the harassment was sufficiently severe or pervasive to create an abusive educational environment, that she subjectively perceived the environment to be hostile or abusive, and that the environment was permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the educational environment. The Court also determined that a reasonable high school teacher or administrator would have known that non-physical sexual harassment, like the principal’s conduct, would violate a student’s constitutional right to equal protection.
The First Circuit Court awarded the student her costs in bringing the appeal and remanded the case back to the trial court in Maine for further proceedings.
This decision is a significant victory for students subjected to sexual harassment, reinforcing the fact that school officials can ignore obvious signs of sexual harassment at their peril.
A copy of the Court’s decision may be found here.
