Third Circuit Affirms Denial Of Qualified Immunity For Teacher Who Allowed Kindergartner To Be Taken From Class By Unauthorized Adult

The Third Circuit has affirmed a district court’s denial of qualified immunity for a schoolteacher who allowed a kindergartner to leave his class with an adult who failed to identify herself and who later sexually abused the student. In L.R. v. Philadelphia School District, No. 14-4640 (3rd Cir. Sept. 7, 2016), a teacher in the Philadelphia School District allowed a kindergarten student (called “Jane” in the opinion) to leave his classroom with an adult who failed to identify herself. The adult sexually assaulted the child later that day. In the early hours of the next morning, a sanitation worker found the child in a playground after hearing her cries. The child’s parent sued the teacher, who claimed qualified immunity. The Third Circuit acknowledged that teachers are often shielded by the doctrine of qualified immunity, but that this case was different because state action created the danger to the plaintiff. First, the court applied a state-created danger exception to the general rule that states have no duty under the due process clause to protect its citizens from private harm. The court noted that this was not simply a case of the school official’s failure to intervene to prevent an unauthorized person from removing a child from school. It was instead a school official allowing a stranger to remove the child from a safe place—the kindergarten class—to an unsafe one:

The setting here is a typical kindergarten classroom. Children in this setting are closely supervised by their teacher. Their freedom of movement is restricted. Indeed, they are not likely to use the bathroom without permission, much less wander unattended from the classroom. In the classroom, the teacher acts as the gatekeeper for very young children who are unable to make reasoned decisions about when and with whom to leave the classroom. Viewed in this light, Jane was safe in her classroom unless and until her teacher, Littlejohn, permitted her to leave.

The court also found that “the risk of harm in releasing a five-year-old child to an unidentified, unverified adult is “so obvious” as to rise to the level of deliberate indifference,” the appropriate standard when an official is not under intense time pressure to make a decision with limited facts. In this case, the teacher asked the adult for identification and documentation that she was authorized to remove Jane, but nevertheless allowed Jane to be taken without the requested verification. The circuit court then turned to whether Jane’s right to be free from “unjustified intrusions on personal security” was clearly established at the time of the teacher’s actions. The court found that sufficiently analogous cases should have placed school officials on notice that it was unlawful to take a helpless child out of a safe environment and expose her to obvious danger by allowing her to go with an unknown person. The case is here.