Teacher Immunity

Mike Smith, writing for the Associated Press, has a story on a bill passed by the General Assembly that conveys some immunity for teachers against lawsuits by students disciplined for being disruptive. I am getting some error messages when I try to call up the General Assembly website, so I’m unable to look at the specifics.

According to Smith:

Some educators have told lawmakers that parents of disruptive students often threaten to sue when teachers try to keep them from acting up or leaving their seats without permission.

The bill would give teachers so-called “qualified immunity” from lawsuits when they take reasonable actions to impose classroom discipline.

That means judges can dismiss such lawsuits at the beginning of the legal process, rather than forcing teachers or schools to waste time and money defending themselves.

Maybe this is different, but “qualified immunity” in the context of suits alleging civil rights violations is difficult to take advantage of. Frequently, whether or not the immunity should be enjoyed requires quite a bit of factual development — police officer says one thing happened while plaintiff-suspect says another thing happened. Police version is entitled to immunity and suspect version is not. In that context, the immunity doesn’t really protect the officer from a long, expensive lawsuit even if it might ultimately protect him or her from judgment.

I don’t know that it’s possible to word a statute so that a teacher who is justified in a disciplinary act gets dismissed quickly and painlessly from litigation while leaving the courts open to students who have been abused by a teacher that goes over the line.