Bichel v. Kennedale Independent School District
The Students’ Civil Rights Project represents a Texas student who endured over a year of sex-based verbal abuse that drove her to the brink of suicide. The case seeks to make clear that schools cannot wait until harassment drives a student out of school before they take steps to stop it.
For over a year, 16-year-old Merritt Bichel experienced almost daily harassment by a group of boys in her school band. After one of the boys apparently shared an intimate photo of Merritt with the others, the boys regularly called her a “whore,” a “slut,” “desperate hoe,” and a “bitch.” In one text message, one of them told Merritt she should kill herself. She eventually tried.
But when Merritt told school administrators about the harassment, they did next to nothing to stop it. They left the boys sitting next to Merritt in band class. And after a limited investigation, the school said that the boys did not violate the school’s sex-based harassment policy because their behavior was not serious enough to create a “hostile environment.”
Merritt sued the school district and its Title IX coordinator under Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause in Texas federal court, but the district court dismissed the case. It held that Merritt did not have a case because, among other things, she did not claim that the harassment drove her to quit band class, and anyway, the school did enough because it eventually investigated.
We intervened to request that the court reopen the case and allow Merritt to file an amended complaint. Our brief explains that harassment does not need to drive kids out of school before it violates Title IX, and the fact that a school does an investigation does not mean it can let the harassment continue in the meantime. We await the court’s decision.
