Authored By: Rob Mohr |
Public Justice is representing an anonymous plaintiff, E.R., on appeal in South Carolina after the district court dismissed her Title IX discrimination suit for falling outside the statute of limitations prescribed by the Court. Her suit, filed in 2022 and just before her 21st birthday, argues that administrators at her high school violated Title IX by demonstrating deliberate indifference to the sexual abuse she suffered during her time as a student. E.R. was assaulted four different times while a student at Bluffton High School in the Beaufort Country School District. Each time she reported an incident to school officials, school leadership took no action, and she faced retaliation from the perpetrators and other students.
Title IX does not provide a federal statute of limitations for reporting claims. Instead, the Court is instructed to borrow the most appropriate statute of limitations from the originating state’s laws. Title IX requires that the selected rule not run against any federal laws. In this case, the district court used the South Carolina Tort Claims Act (SCTA), claiming it applied because she was suing a public school district and, therefore, a government entity. This decision meant the statute of limitations for E.R.’s claim was two years from her 18th birthday. As noted above, she filed her suit more than two years after her 18th birthday, and her case was dismissed.
However, Public Justice’s appeal claims that using the SCTA to set the statute of limitations was improper procedure. In their view and E.R.’s, the district court should have used the statute of limitations for claims “arising out of an act of sexual abuse,” which would have given E.R. until her 27th birthday to file a suit. Alternatively, the plaintiffs suggested using South Carolina’s general personal injury statute of limitations, allowing her to file a claim three years from her 18th birthday. Under both laws, E.R.’s claim is timely.
Furthermore, they argue that using the SCTA was not only an irrelevant choice but a violation of the laws that govern Title IX claims. According to the 1986 Civil Rights Remedies Equalization Act (CRREA), the remedies available for a Title IX claim (and other similar claims like Title VI and ADA) must be consistent between public and private schools. A private school in the same situation as Beaufort County School District could not use the SCTA to set the statute of limitations for a claim; thus, a public school can not do so either. Public Justice called for the Court of Appeals to reverse E.R.’s dismissal and proceed with the case.
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