North Carolina Bullying Victim Representation
Bullying is a serious matter in North Carolina grade schools, just like elementary and secondary schools across the country. But you don't have to stand idly by and watch your student suffer bullying harm. North Carolina law gives you and your student substantial rights to fight bullying and hold school officials accountable to prevent and address bullying harm. You may be able to pursue civil litigation to recover monetary damages for your student's bullying harm. Yet, to fully activate and effectively deploy those rights on your student's behalf, you need skilled and experienced legal representation. Retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Education Law Team to help your North Carolina grade school student pursue civil litigation to recover monetary damages for bullying harm.
Bullying as a National Problem Warranting Money Recovery
According to the National Association of School Nurses, school bullying is a persistent national problem with a serious impact on students. Increased depression, academic failure, and school dismissal or dropout are all bullying impacts, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Student suicide can also closely correlate with school bullying, according to the National Library of Medicine. Parents have sued public grade schools and private grade schools, alleging that bullying caused student deaths. Parents are increasingly holding schools accountable for bullying harm.
Bullying in North Carolina Grade Schools
Bullying is also a widespread problem in North Carolina schools. According to the North Carolina Youth Risk Behavior Survey, “nearly 43 percent of middle and 19 percent of high school students have been bullied on school property in the past 12 months.” The North Carolina Center for Safer Schools reports that sixty percent of high school students report witnessing bullying in the past year. But North Carolina school staff members don't necessarily believe bullying to be a problem. According to the North Carolina Center for Safer Schools, only sixteen percent of school staff members believe that students experience bullying. And that is so despite the fact that the Center's statistics show that school bullying prevention programs cut bullying incidents in half. The Lento Law Firm's Team of attorneys are available to help your North Carolina student pursue monetary damages and other relief from bullying.
North Carolina Anti-Bullying Laws
North Carolina's legislature enacted the School Violence Prevention Act to prevent and address bullying. The Act's Section 407.15 provides directly that “no student … shall be subjected to bullying or harassing behavior by school employees or students.” The Act's Section 407.16 requires every school district in the state to adopt and publicize an anti-bullying policy. The policy must prohibit bullying, define bullying consistent with the Act, and describe the school's required response to bullying. The policy must also provide for the school's prompt investigation and redress of bullying incidents, including punishment for the wrongdoer and protection for the bullying victim. If the state funds the program, the school must also provide anti-bullying training. The Act's Section 407.17 further requires each school to develop and implement bullying prevention strategies. North Carolina law stands behind you in your efforts to prevent and redress your student's bullying harm. Our attorneys also stand behind you to invoke those North Carolina laws.
North Carolina's Bullying Definition
States define bullying in slightly different ways. North Carolina defines bullying broadly to reach any threatening conduct, whether or not based on a student's particular protected characteristics like race, religion, disability, and sex. Section 407.15 of North Carolina's School Violence Prevention Act defines bullying as
“any pattern of gestures or written, electronic, or verbal communications, or any physical act or any threatening communication, that takes place on school property, at any school-sponsored function, or on a school bus, and that: (1) places a student or school employee in actual and reasonable fear of harm to his or her person or damage to his or her property; or (2) creates or is certain to create a hostile environment by substantially interfering with or impairing a student's educational performance, opportunities, or benefits.
The same section separately defines the hostile environment form of bullying. A hostile environment is one where the victim “subjectively views the conduct as bullying or harassing behavior” and where the conduct “is objectively severe or pervasive enough that a reasonable person would agree that it is bullying or harassing behavior.” Common examples of bullying, falling within North Carolina's definitions, include:
- gossiping or spreading rumors, slander, or libel among other students, on school premises or online in connection with school programs, to destroy the reputation and relationships of the victim student;
- ridiculing, harassing, intimidating, and demeaning the student victim's physical characteristics, dress, demeanor, or other attributes or associations;
- committing physical violence against the victim student, such as striking, slapping, pinching, pulling hair, shoving, and kicking, often in conjunction with verbal ridicule and
- oppressing and coercing the student victim into withdrawing from school activities and relationships or giving up personal property or other rights and interests.
North Carolina's Bullying Definition Includes Discrimination
Bullying typically includes discriminatory harassment. Section 407.15 of North Carolina's School Violence Prevention Act expressly includes discriminatory harassment in its definition of bullying, referring to
“any actual or perceived differentiating characteristic, such as race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, socioeconomic status, academic status, gender identity, physical appearance, sexual orientation, or mental, physical, developmental, or sensory disability, or by association with a person who has or is perceived to have one or more of these characteristics.”
Cyberbullying Falls Within the North Carolina Definition of Bullying
Section 407.15 of North Carolina's School Violence Prevention Act expressly includes electronic communications in its definition of bullying. Cyberbullying thus violates the law's bullying prohibition. North Carolina has a separate law, North Carolina Code Section 14-458.1, criminalizing cyberbullying as a misdemeanor. That law elevates the cyberbullying crime from a Class 1 to a Class 2 misdemeanor if the victim is a minor.
North Carolina Civil Liability Compensating Bullying Victims
North Carolina's School Violence Prevention Act does not, on its own terms, create a money damages action for bullying harm. Instead, the Act's Section 407.18 expressly preserves the right of bullying victims to pursue relief under other North Carolina law: “This Article shall not be interpreted to prevent a victim of bullying or harassing behavior from seeking redress under any other available law, either civil or criminal.” Those other laws may include North Carolina tort law, certain contract theories against private schools, and federal law, as described below. We can help you determine your North Carolina student's recovery rights.
North Carolina Governmental Liability Law and Bullying Claimants
Many states claim sovereign immunity against lawsuits for wrongs committed by state and local government agencies and their employees, including public schools, teachers, and staff. North Carolina, though, is among the states that waive sovereign immunity. North Carolina waives sovereign immunity and provides for the liability of public schools and school officials, among other public agencies and officials, through the North Carolina Tort Claims Act. You stand a significantly better chance of recovering monetary damages for your student for bullying harm from your student's school and its officials. The Tort Claims Act, though, requires that you present your student's claim to a commission that the Act establishes rather than in state court. The commission operates under its own administrative rules for determining money damages claims. The state court of appeals has limited appeal review of commission decisions.
North Carolina Negligence Law Compensating Bullying Victims
North Carolina's School Violence Prevention Act and Tort Claims Act do not name the legal theory under which you and your student may maintain a money damages action against the school for bullying harm. Instead, your student must look to North Carolina tort law or other law for that theory of recovery. Negligence is the primary theory under which bullying victims would proceed. A negligence claim must prove that the carelessness of school officials caused or contributed to your student's harm. Negligence theories could include the failure to reasonably monitor, investigate, and protect, especially once school officials learn of the bullying. North Carolina school officials would not ordinarily be directly liable for bullying harms a student perpetrates against another student. The negligence theory would instead have to do with showing a careless failure to prevent and protect.
Other North Carolina Tort Law Compensating Bullying Victims
North Carolina law may offer other tort recovery theories, although those other theories tend to require intentional misconduct of the sort that school officials are unlikely to commit. Assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and defamation (libel or slander) are recovery theories available under North Carolina law. The student perpetrator of bullying may well be liable under such theories, but recovering monetary damages from a student may be difficult or impossible. Proving that a school or school official is directly liable for the student's intentional wrong, instead of liable only in negligence for the failure to reasonably prevent and protect, may require extraordinary circumstances such as the school's encouragement or ratification of the intentional wrong. We can help you sort out the available theories.
North Carolina Compensation Theories for Private School Bullying
The above tort theories would also be available in a money damages action against a North Carolina private school and its teachers or officials. But your student may also have a breach of contract claim against the private school if the school promised specific bullying protections and then failed to provide them, causing your student's bullying injury. Money damages claims against North Carolina private schools do not depend on the North Carolina Tort Claims Act.
Federal Laws Compensating for Bullying Harm
Congress has left the regulation of bullying to the states, as the Constitution may require in the limits it places on congressional power. But Congress long ago enacted a Civil War-era statute, Section 1983, that provides for a private money damages lawsuit against state or local agencies and officials acting under color of state law to deprive a person of constitutional rights. School officials ignoring or affirmatively sanctioning bullying may violate constitutional due process or equal protection rights, resulting in a substantial monetary recovery. You and your student may have a Section 1983 action against the school and school officials, depending on the special facts of your case. Federal courts have authorized Section 1983 actions under theories of a state-created danger, see, e.g., Jones v. Reynolds, 438 F.3d 685, 690 (6th Cir. 2006), a special duty and relationship, see, e.g., Soper v. Hoben, 195 F.3d 845, 852 (6th Cir. 1999), and a shocks the conscience test, see, e.g., Range v. Douglas, 763 F.3d 573, 588 (6th Cir. 2014). We can help you determine whether your student has a federal claim under this law.
Federal Anti-Discrimination Laws and Bullying Compensation
As indicated above, bullying typically involves some form of discrimination, often a form against which federal anti-discrimination laws protect. If the school fails to protect your student against bullying, the school may be violating your student's federal anti-discrimination rights under one or more of these laws:
- The Rehabilitation Act of 1973's Section 504 ensuring equal educational access for students with disabilities;
- the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ensuring a free appropriate public education for students with disabilities;
- the Americans with Disabilities Act's Title II requiring reasonable accommodations for students with disabilities;
- the Civil Rights Act of 1964's Title IV prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin;
- the Civil Rights Act of 1964's Title VI prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, or national origin; and
- the Education Amendments of 1972's Title IX prohibiting sexual assault, sexual harassment, stalking, dating violence, and domestic violence.
While these federal anti-discrimination provisions do not all expressly provide for a private right of action for damages, Section 1983 and other laws may nonetheless authorize a money damages action for their violation.
North Carolina Bullying Liability Defendants
North Carolina's Tort Claims Act authorizes money damages lawsuits not only against local public agencies such as a school and school districts but also against public officials such as teachers and school staff. Ordinarily, a money damages action against the school and district would ensure a fiscally responsible party from which to recover. But proceeding against the individual school official may be appropriate, especially when the official exhibits extreme carelessness, recklessness, or indifference. And the school is likely to indemnify the school official for most acts other than intentional acts. As briefly indicated above, the students committing the bullying may also be liable, although they may not have the money, earnings, or assets to compensate for the harm. Parents are generally only liable for a student's wrongs to a limited extent under special circumstances. Let us help you identify the appropriate defendants to pursue.
Damages Types for North Carolina Bullying Victims
North Carolina law authorizes compensatory damages for bullying harms and other personal injuries. Compensatory damages attempt to make the victim whole. Compensatory damages fall into two general classes: economic and non-economic harm. Economic harm can include your student's medical expenses, counseling expenses, lost wages and earning capacity, and replacement costs of damaged, destroyed, or stolen personal property such as jewelry, electronic devices, clothing, eyewear, backpacks, and books. Non-economic harm includes pain, suffering, lost enjoyment of life, and mental and emotional distress.
North Carolina law also authorizes punitive damages if you can prove by clear and convincing evidence that school officials acted with malice or in willful and wanton misconduct toward your student, contributing to your student's bullying harm. Punitive damages punish the defendant. North Carolina's punitive damages statute limits the amount to a maximum of three times the compensatory damages and no more than $250,000. Let us help you determine your student's damages for bullying harm.
Pursuing a North Carolina Civil Action for Bullying
Our Education Law Team is ready to help you investigate and pursue a money damages action in North Carolina to recover for your student's bullying harm. Lawsuits against public agencies and officials are technical and complex. They are certainly not the type of matter for a non-lawyer to pursue without legal representation. But they are also not the type of matter to pursue with a local criminal defense lawyer or civil litigator who lacks skill and experience in dealing with the claim commission's administrative rules and the other special issues of governmental liability. No attorney can guarantee the result, but our attorneys have the special skills and experience your student needs for the greatest likelihood of recovery. We can investigate your student's case, acquire the supporting evidence, state the claims in a court or administrative complaint, advocate and negotiate for early voluntary settlement of the case, handle pre-hearing and pretrial matters, and conduct the hearing and trial for your student's best possible outcome. We can also enforce the money judgment and defend or take appeals as necessary and appropriate.
Defending Disciplinary Charges Against Bullying Victims
Our Education Law Team can provide another service that may be necessary in your student's bullying case. State legislatures have recognized that bullying victims often act out, creating their own disciplinary issues. Your student may have engaged in various forms of antisocial or delinquent behavior, like vandalism, truancy, or fighting, simply because of the bullying your student has suffered. When school officials don't prevent bullying, the bullying victims must, in some way, adjust or defend themselves. Self-defense may involve fighting or other actions that appear to be disciplinary matters when they are instead the result of the school's own failure to protect against bullying. Other common forms of acting out may include disrespecting teachers, disrupting class, and poor or failing grades.
If your student faces misconduct charges having to do with failure to progress academically, behavioral issues, or even academic misconduct, let our attorneys help defend your student against those charges through the school's disciplinary procedures. And let us help present your student's bullying claims as both a defense and for appropriate recovery and relief. Hold your student's North Carolina school officials accountable for their obligation to prevent your student's bullying. Don't let the school blame your student for the school's own wrong.
Tips to Avoid North Carolina School Bullying
Your student is not to blame for being a victim of bullying. Nor is your student responsible for stopping the bullying. Stopping bullying is the school's obligation, not your student's obligation. Yet your student may be able to take certain actions to minimize the bullying or at least minimize its impact while helping your student's case for compensation. The first thing to tell your student is not to respond in kind. Don't join the bullies. Doing so may result in discipline while also ruining the damages case. The next thing to tell your student is to tell you about the bullying as soon as it happens so that you can report it to school officials and come to your student's defense. The next thing your student should know is to share reports of the bullying with teachers and other school officials as soon as the bullying happens.
Your student may worry that reporting the bullying will result in retaliation by the bullies or even by involved teachers and school staff. Make sure your student knows that retaliation for reporting bullying is its own wrong and that if school officials retaliate, they greatly increase their chance of facing civil liability for your student's bullying harm. Don't let your student face bullying alone. Let your student know that you stand behind your student with our representation to help.
Premier Services for North Carolina Bullying Victims
The Lento Law Firm's Education Law Team is available in North Carolina to help your grade school student recover a monetary award compensating for bullying harm. Our attorneys have helped hundreds of students nationwide with bullying and other school conduct issues. Call 888.535.3686 now or chat with us for the skilled services and experienced representation your North Carolina student needs to recover from bullying harm.
