How does the Supreme Court define harassment pursuant to Title IX?

The Education Amendments of 1972 added Title IX to the federal civil rights laws, forbidding a “funding recipient” from discriminating on the basis of sex in educational programs or activities. The United States Supreme Court has ruled that sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination that violates Title IX.

In Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, 526 U.S. 629 (1999), the Supreme Court ruled that, in order to constitute sex discrimination in violation of Title IX, the harassment must be “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it can be said to deprive the victims of access to the educational opportunities or benefits provided by the school.” The Court elaborated:

[A] plaintiff must establish sexual harassment of students that is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive, and that so undermines and detracts from the victims’ educational experience, that the victim-students are effectively denied equal access to an institution’s resources and opportunities.

Whether gender-oriented conduct rises to the level of actionable “harassment” thus “depends on a constellation of surrounding circumstances, expectations, and relationships,” [citation omitted], including, but not limited to, the ages of the harasser and the victim and the number of individuals involved [citation omitted]. Courts, moreover, must bear in mind that schools are unlike the adult workplace and that children may regularly interact in a manner that would be unacceptable among adults…. Damages are not available for simple acts of teasing and name-calling among school children, however, even where these comments target differences in gender. Rather, in the context of student-on-student harassment, damages are available only where the behavior is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it denies its victims the equal access to education that Title IX is designed to protect.