An Arizona judge ruled earlier this summer that the Chandler Unified School District could not be the subject of a wrongful death lawsuit brought by one of the parents of a student who died by suicide in 2022.
The suit alleged the Hamilton High School freshman had been the victim of bullying and harassment, but that the school did not do enough to stop it and protect the student; the school denies those allegations. The lawsuit also says the student’s parents brought the situation to the school’s attention.
To explain the legal principles behind the decision, The Show spoke with Betsy Grey, a law professor at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law — starting with what Arizona law says about the kinds of things a school district can be held liable for, and those things for which it cannot.
Full conversation
BETSY GREY: So a school district has a duty to protect their students and provide a safe environment. So, in other words, when your kid goes to kindergarten, we don't expect the school to give them lead-based crayons because they could eat them and get poisoned. And if a school district fails in that duty and is negligent, then you, a parent, could bring an action for damages against the school district.
Now, there is immunity for school districts for certain broader policy decisions, but not for those kinds of questions.
MARK BRODIE: Well, so I guess the question then is what is a reasonable standard of safety, right? Because in this case, the the family of the student who died by suicide said the school should have done something about the fact that they and the student brought to the school's attention that this person was being bullied, for example, and being harassed and the school, according to the family and didn't do anything.
GREY: Right. So, you know, bullying as you know, has been on the rise in our schools in Arizona across the country. And every state has some form of a duty or requirement either through the common law or through a statute or regulation, or maybe both, imposing a duty on school districts to control to the extent they can bullying of their students.
As I understand it, the parents in this very tragic situation were alleging that the school district was negligent in the way they were addressing the bullying concerns at the high school.
BRODIE: From a legal perspective, does the way that a school would try to address bullying make a difference. I mean, we know it makes a difference in terms of whether or not the behavior continues or not, but legally speaking, does it matter in what way the school tried to address it?
GREY: And honestly, I don't know exactly what the facts are in this case. So let me just show that at the outset. But yes, it is, you know, have they done enough? And, and what's reasonable to expect schools to do to try to control bullying. They're not going to be able to control bullying 100%. And we see them as more responsible for controlling bullying on-campus than off-campus. I would suspect that a lot of the bullying goes on off-campus goes on through social media. And so the schools have less access to controlling that kind of behavior.
BRODIE: Do they also have less responsibility if, if something is not happening on school grounds or doing during school hours?
GREY: Probably, probably.
BRODIE: One of the things that the students’ family was quoted as saying and I'm going to paraphrase it here, I'm not going to get it exactly right, Was that basically they respect the court's decision but feel that it's not the, the law is not really keeping up with the reality in schools and that essentially, you know, schools pay a lot of attention to students mental health and they recognize that suicide rates are unfortunately going up in this population but maybe aren't quite doing enough and maybe the law isn't requiring them to do enough. I'm curious what you make of comments like that.
GREY: The problem in this particular case is that the plaintiffs, the parents, I guess, were alleging that the school was negligent in failing to control the bullying behavior adequately. But the problem is that they're alleging that that lack of control over the bullying was what led to or cause the student to commit suicide and that is crossing another whole area of law that's very hard to overcome. And that, that is that we think of, the law thinks of suicide mostly as a very unpredictable or unforeseeable event.
So that the argument under the law is that even if the defendant is negligent, the suicide is not a natural consequence of the defendant's negligence. Or we say in the law that the victim's suicide was the superseding cause of death. In other words, it's the victim, him- or herself that causes the suicide, not the negligent behavior of the in this case school district here. So and this is a terrible name, but we call that the suicide rule and, and basically every jurisdiction in the country has some version of what of this suicide rule.
BRODIE: Is it the same kind of thinking, for example, if let's say one teen is bullying another and the teen that's doing, the bullying eventually kills the student that they're bullying. Is that a different legal standard than if the bully is bullying the teen and the victim then goes and dies by suicide.
GREY: Exactly. That's exactly right. So, if you are the tortfeasor who directly causes the death of a victim, you would be held responsible both civilly and probably criminally for that. But here you were saying that the victim acted on his own. And this is a very complicated area of law that this is very deeply embedded in the law, this, this notion that we don't hold individuals responsible for somebody else's suicide.
Now, you said at the beginning that the parents were disappointed and they thought that social views are changing here about bullying and, I assume, they also meant about suicide. And that's true. I mean, that is true. Now, there are gradually we're creating in the law, some minor exceptions to that rule. And, and we see these certain exceptions breaking through.
BRODIE: Do you think that as you know, people continue to think about mental illness, especially among students and the problem of suicide, is this an area you think that more states will take a look at in their laws, and if not, you know, confer full responsibility on school districts, maybe sort of inch in that direction as you suggested, some places are doing.
GREY: I personally think that as a policy matter, that would be a good change. That would, you know like you said, our social views on suicide are changing. We're seeing it more as a public health issue than we did previously. And so maybe, to address this big public health issue, maybe we should be going, you know, one avenue to address it would be to go through the schools. And so,, I think that, like I said, as a deterrence value, maybe this is a great way to, or at least a one way to address that problem.
