Doe v. St. Anselm’s Abbey School

What’s at stake: Safe and equitable schools for Black students and students with disabilities

Summary: For his entire year as a sixth grader at St. Anselm’s Abbey School, classmates harassed “John Doe” because he is Black and autistic. They publicly called him race- and disability-based slurs, including “burnt chicken nugget,” “n*gger,” “brown monkey,” and “autistic n*gger,” among others. They also harassed him in class-wide group text threads, threatened him, and physically assaulted him while at school. The harassment was so bad that John was too afraid to ride the school bus, could not focus in class, and contemplated suicide.

John and his mother, “Jane Doe,” repeatedly reported the harassment to St. Anselm’s, a private Catholic school in D.C. Rather than help John, the school punished him. First, it suspended John for defending himself from an attack by classmates, none of whom were disciplined. Then it canceled Ms. Doe’s contract to re-enroll John for the next school year, effectively expelling him.

On June 17, 2025, Public Justice and its co-counsel filed a lawsuit against St. Anselm’s on behalf of John and Ms. Doe. The lawsuit alleges that St. Anselm’s engaged in race- and disability-discrimination, as well as retaliation, in violation of the D.C. Human Rights Act and Section 1981, a federal law that prohibits race discrimination in contracting.