Overview
Cohen Milstein, with co-counsel from Public Justice and Correia & Puth, represents John Doe, a former student at St. Anselm’s Abbey School, as well as his mother, Jane Doe. John and Jane Doe claim that St. Anselm’s failed to take meaningful action to address relentless harassment, to which John Doe was subjected because of his race and disability. In fact, rather than protecting John Doe from the harassment, St. Anselm’s suspended John Doe for defending himself from an attack by four students and then barred him from re-enrolling for the next school year.
When Jane Doe met with the headmaster to discuss the school’s decision to effectively expel her son, the headmaster said that “the only thing [the school] did wrong was accept an autistic child” and that he “would have never accepted [John] if [he] knew [John] was autistic.”
John and Jane Doe bring this lawsuit under the District of Columbia Human Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (Section 1981).
Case Background
For John Doe’s entire year as a sixth grader at St. Anselm’s Abbey School, students relentlessly harassed him because he is Black and autistic. Classmates publicly called him race- and disability-based slurs, including “burnt chicken nugget,” “n*gger,” “brown monkey,” and “autistic n*gger,” among others. These students expressed to John their disdain for Black and autistic people, harassed him in class-wide group text threads, threatened him, and physically assaulted him while at school. John Doe and his mother repeatedly reported the harassment to school staff and administration. But St. Anselm’s failed to take appropriate action to address it. As a result, the abuse escalated to the point that John was too afraid to ride the school bus, could not focus in class, and contemplated suicide.
To make matters worse, St. Anselm’s punished John Doe and his mother for reporting the harassment—first suspending John for defending himself from an attack by four students, none of whom were Black and none of whom were punished, and then barring him from re-enrolling for the next school year. When Jane Doe met with the headmaster to discuss the school’s decision to effectively expel John, the headmaster said that “the only thing [the school] did wrong was accept an autistic child” and that he “would have never accepted [John] if [he] knew [John] was autistic.”
John and Jane Doe claim that this cruelty was not just an abdication of St. Anselm’s moral responsibility to its students. It was also illegal.