Thought Leadership

Graduation and Termination of Special Education Services 

August is here, and at the beginning of the school year it’s time to think about graduation. That’s right, it’s never too early to plan for a student’s graduation and transition to post-secondary life. Waiting until spring to prepare for this change can lead to trouble. Here’s what you need to know.  

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DOs and DON’Ts for K-12 Building Administrators for Reports of Sexual Harassment

By Thompson & Horton’s Title IX Team

The 2020 Title IX Rules provide detailed training requirements for school district personnel who serve in formal roles in the Title IX grievance process, including the Title IX Coordinator, investigators, decisionmakers, appeal officers, and informal resolution facilitators. In their efforts to ensure all designated Title IX personnel are trained, schools may overlook the need to educate and train K-12 campus personnel—especially principals, assistant principals, counselors, and teachers—about the rules of the road when it comes to responding to allegations of sex-based misconduct, including harassment in schools.

K-12 campus employees are often the first to learn about allegations of sex-based misconduct at their schools. To their credit, building administrators usually work quickly to address problems at their campus. In some instances, campus administrators have already investigated allegations of sex-based misconduct and taken disciplinary action before the Title IX Coordinator is ever called. Although a proactive response to reported misconduct is laudable in many cases, in the context of a school’s Title IX obligations these actions can be the basis of an OCR complaint or other Title IX dispute.

Campus personnel at K-12 schools need to know what they should do and what they should not do when they learn or receive a report about potential sex-based misconduct, including harassment, at their schools. Here are some DOs and DON’Ts to get this essential conversation started. You can also use this convenient flyer to drive home these important tips. We recommend having copies on hand for campus personnel, including principals, assistant principals, counselors, and teachers, so that they can refer to it whenever they receive information about alleged sex-based misconduct at their schools.

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Does Title IX Apply to Tax-Exempt Private Schools? Two Courts Say Yes

By Leila Gary, Jackie Gharapour Wernz, & Leah Northener

It’s well established that Title IX applies only to entities that receive federal financial assistance, which traditionally has been interpreted to apply to a school’s actual receipt of federal money, such as special education funds. Two recent decisions from federal courts in  Maryland and California have turned this traditional understanding on its head, holding that a school’s tax-exempt status under the federal tax code is the functional equivalent of receiving funds. What do these decisions mean for tax-exempt private and independent schools?    

The Maryland case, Buettner-Hartsoe v. Baltimore Lutheran High School Association, involved a private, independent, religiously-affiliated school that was sued for damages under Title IX. The school argued that it was not subject to Title IX because the events at issue occurred before it accepted a federal PPP loan and had not otherwise accepted federal funds. The former students argued that the school was subject to Title IX because it received a federal tax exemption as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. The judge agreed, finding that an organization’s tax exemption under 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code is akin to a “Congressional subsidy and the equivalent of a cash grant” from the federal government. 

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