Teachers Avoid Sexually Assaulted Student’s Due Process Claim

A disabled Texas middle schooler doesn’t have a due process claim for her sexual assault in a suit against teachers who twice allowed her and another student with known violent tendencies to wander the halls unsupervised when the assaults occurred, the Fifth Circuit said Thursday.

The key to M.F.'s claim was the court’s adoption of the state-created danger exception to the general rule that the government has no due process duty to protect people from privately inflicted harms. But the opinion by Judge Don R. Willett said that court has never adopted that exception and that this wasn’t the case ...