Description
Educational institutions had been shielded from liability for sexual harassment until the late 1990s, when two landmark Supreme Court decisions set forth a new standard for liability of institutions where students are harassed. This shift in law, plus recent legal imperatives indicating that training is an important prevention tool, has encouraged institutions to strengthen their anti-harassment training.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that certain standards must be satisfied to prove a school violated Title IX — two of its four elements are that the school had actual knowledge of harassment and that a school official with the power to take action was deliberately indifferent or took steps to address the misconduct that were clearly unreasonable in light of the known circumstances.
