E.R. v. Beaufort County School District
What’s at stake: The amount of time a survivor has to file a lawsuit under Title IX.
Summary: Just before she turned 21, E.R., a South Carolina resident, filed a lawsuit against her former school district, Beaufort County School District, for violating her Title IX rights. As a student at Bluffton High School, E.R. suffered multiple sexual assaults by other students. She repeatedly reported these assaults to school staff, but they refused to help. One staff member advised her not to report her rape to police because it would negatively impact her assailant’s football scholarship. The school’s refusal to take action resulted in E.R.’s ultimate transfer to another high school. Yet, when she filed a lawsuit just a few years later as an adult, the court dismissed the case as untimely, applying a special two-year statute of limitations for suits against the government. In December 2024, Public Justice intervened, filing an appeal on E.R.’s behalf in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Core legal problem: The lower court’s ruling would shorten the statute of limitations for student survivors across South Carolina to file Title IX claims. Title IX does not have its own statute of limitations. To fill the gap, federal courts borrow a time limit from state law—but the same rules must apply to Title IX claims against private schools as apply to similar claims against public schools. Here, the court violated that rule because it adopted an especially short time limit that applies only to claims against the government. Instead, courts should apply the longer limitations periods for sexual abuse—or at minimum, the three-year statute of limitations that usually applies to personal injury claims—regardless of whether the defendant is a public or private school.
Public Justice is litigating the case on appeal along with attorney Joshua Slavin.
