A California school district was immune under section 48808 of the California Education Code for liability arising from the suicide of a student who took her life at home during winter break, a California appellate court concluded in a decision published this week in Vallejo United School District v. Superior Court.
Armored Up: Statutory immunities can provide formidable protections for government actors in some situations. Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash.
Section 48808 states, in relevant part, that districts and district employees don’t have a responsibility for the safety of students when the student is not on school property except during transportation to-or-from school, in school sponsored activities off site, or if they have “otherwise specifically assumed such responsibility or liability or has failed to exercise reasonable care under the circumstances.” As the court notes, there is some ambiguity as to whether that final section about “otherwise assuming responsibility” is a standalone carveout to the immunity or if it only applies in the transportation and outside-activity scenarios, and that ambiguity is underscored by the fairly broad way the language was interpreted by the California Supreme Court in Hoyem v. Manhattan Beach City School District (1972) 22 Cal.3d 508.
The plaintiffs here argued that the carve-out of that last section applied to their situation, but the appellate court concluded otherwise and in fact came up with a (IMHO) very broadly worded interpretation of what section 48808 means, which actually seems to negate (or perhaps just be in tension with) some plaintiff-favorable dicta in Hoyem. That dicta had said that section 48808 withdraws immunity “when the school district, inter alia, has failed to exercise reasonable care under the circumstances.” (Internal quotes omitted.) Vallejo United is having none of that, however, and explicitly holds: “a school district cannot be held liable for negligence that proximately causes off-campus harm when the student is no longer supposed to be under the district’s supervision.” That language will undoubtedly be quoted in many a future case, now that Vallejo United has been published.
The immunity that is at issue here is merely one of many, many immunities for government actors that are encoded in California law, which is one of the reasons civil rights litigation can be quite challenging: because these immunities are like landmines for the unwarry, potentially creating partial or even complete barriers to liability. And that’s before we even talk about the Eleventh Amendment, which is also a concern in federal litigation against California school districts.
For free consultation about potential civil rights cases, call today.