Background
G.R.L. was violently attacked by a fellow student, N.A., while attending school in the Clark County School District. G.R.L. and her mother sued the district under Section nineteen eighty-three for a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. They advanced a state-created danger theory, alleging the district knew N.A. was violent and placed her in a general education classroom pursuant to a policy of placing violent students in such settings. The district court granted the district’s motion to dismiss the second amended complaint.
The court’s reasoning
The court reviewed the dismissal de novo and applied the standard that a plaintiff must plead factual content allowing a reasonable inference of liability. To succeed on a state-created danger claim, a plaintiff must establish that a state actor’s affirmative actions created or exposed the plaintiff to an actual, particularized danger, that the injury was foreseeable, and that the actor was deliberately indifferent. The court found the allegations insufficient because the prior incidents of violence occurred more than two years before the attack and did not put the district on notice of a risk of physical violence. The court also held that the plaintiffs failed to plausibly allege that any alleged policy was the but-for cause of the attack or that the district acted with deliberate indifference.
What it means going forward
The decision reinforces the high pleading standard for state-created danger claims, requiring specific facts showing the government knew of a specific violent risk and that its actions were the direct cause of the harm.
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