A divided Illinois Supreme Court ruled yesterday that a lawsuit may proceed in which a victim of sexual abuse by a teacher is suing that teacher’s former school district for failing to warn his new district that he had a history of sexual abuse, the Associated Press reports. The text of the decision, which comes eerily close to the Penn State case, is also available here.
The complaint by “Jane Doe No. 3,” a female student who was abused by her teacher, Jon White, at Thomas Paine Elementary School in Urbana, Ill., alleges that although officials in McLean County Unit District No. 5, based in Bloomington, were aware of White’s sexual abuse of fifth-grade girls (officials forced him to resign), they failed to make a note of it in his personnel record. Then, when White applied to teach in Urbana School District No. 116, where Jane Doe No. 3 was a student, he continued his patterns of abuse and caused her harm.
The question before the court was whether or not the McLean County district, where White was formerly employed, owed Jane Doe No. 3 a “duty of care.” In other words, could the district be found liable for any harm caused to future sexual abuse victims if it failed to warn Jon White’s future employers about his abuse of students in its schools? The trial court said no, the former employer doesn’t owe any future victims in another district anything. The Illinois Appellate Court reversed that decision and remanded the case. The Illinois Supreme Court essentially agreed with the Appellate Court, allowing the suit to go forward, but it also narrowed the scope of the complaint.
The high court didn’t say a district has to warn any future employers about a teacher they know might be dangerous. The issue here was that, since the McLean County district gave White a positive letter of recommendation (his personnel record was, after all, clean), Jane Doe No. 3 charged the district with providing false information, basically leaving out details that would have raised a red flag in the Urbana district where White was about to be hired. If that red flag had been raised, she claims, White would not have been hired, and she (and several others) would not have been abused.
“The court did what it had to do. It said you have to report,” Ellyn Bullock, a Champaign attorney representing four of White’s victims, was quoted as saying. “I think the safety message will get through. I think it will even influence courts in other states.”
School districts—and two justices on the high court bench—expressed concern that the ruling could open up a barrage of lawsuits against school districts over teachers, long gone from their schools, who abuse students in other districts that might have hired them without knowing what happened in their past.
What would school districts have to do to make sure they don’t get sued by students who are being abused by a teacher who used to work for them but doesn’t anymore? What do you think about this ruling by Illinois’s high court?