ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, October 8, 1996 TAG: 9610080087
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: The Washington Post
NOTE: Above
In its first day back, the Supreme Court on Monday rejected the appeal of a Texas mother who had sued local school officials for failing to protect her two eighth-grade daughters from sexual harassment by boys on the school bus.
The justices refused to delve into a troublesome legal issue and social controversy: how school officials should respond when students are accused of mistreating or sexually abusing each other. The girls in Monday's case say they endured nine months of taunts, groping and grabbing aboard the bus.
By declining to hear the case, the justices let stand a lower court ruling that found schools cannot be held liable for failing to prevent sexual harassment under a federal law that prohibits discrimination in education.
The Justice Department had urged the court to take the case, brought by Debra Rowinsky, saying that the ruling from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, covering Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, conflicts with decisions by other courts and is contrary to U.S. Department of Education policy on sex discrimination.
The order rejecting Rowinsky's appeal was one of hundreds issued Monday on a variety of cases as the justices opened their 1996-97 term. Because the justices last week had announced what new cases they were taking from appeals pending over the summer, almost all of the orders issued Monday were rejections of pending appeals.
The justices spurned an appeal by Theodore Kaczynski, who is accused of being the Unabomber and contended government leaks to the media have tainted his case; and one by former Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker and two business associates, who challenged Whitewater special prosecutor Kenneth Starr's authority to bring charges against them.
The court also rejected a constitutional challenge to a 1994 federal law that guarantees access to health clinics performing abortions. The case was brought by people who were prosecuted for blocking entrances at a Milwaukee clinic.
Left intact by the court was a lower court decision allowing public high schools to require students to perform 40 hours of community service before graduating. A student at Rye Neck (N.Y.) High School had challenged the requirement as a form of ``involuntary servitude'' and a violation of the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment's personal liberty guarantee.
The court also rejected without comment the appeal of Robert and Carleen Thomas of Milpitas, Calif., who were convicted on federal charges of transmitting obscene materials by computer. They maintained an adult bulletin board in California, but were tried based on the community standards of Tennessee, where a postal inspector downloaded the materials.
Monday also offered the first oral arguments of the term, including a spirited debate over whether a 1992 federal law that forces cable television operators to carry certain broadcast stations violates the First Amendment. A majority of the justices were skeptical of the Justice Department's claim that the law is necessary to preserve the economic viability of the broadcast industry and the diversity of programming available to the public.
The cable industry insists the ``must carry'' law unconstitutionally interferes with cable operators' independence. But the federal government and national broadcasters maintain that if cable operators are not required to carry a certain number of commercial and public broadcast stations, advertising revenues for these stations will dry up and they will no longer be able to provide quality programming to homes that do not have cable.
About 40 percent of U.S. households are not wired for cable.
During arguments of the case, Turner Broadcasting System vs. Federal Communications Commission, many of the justices seemed to question whether broadcasters really need the guaranteed access to cable, noting that before the ``must carry'' rules took effect, relatively few broadcast stations were driven out of business after being denied access to cable systems.
In the school bus sexual harassment case, Rowinsky sued the Bryan Independent School District under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972. Acting on behalf of her daughters, she said the school district knew of the behavior of certain boys on their bus and refused to do anything about it.
Lower courts rejected Rowinsky's claim, saying she failed to show that the school district ``intentionally discriminated'' against her daughters on the basis of sex. In an opinion affirmed by the Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, a district court ruled in Rowinsky vs. Bryan Independent School District that ``it is not enough that [a school district] knew or should have known about sexual harassment at the school or did not effectively deal with such complaints'' to find guilt.
LENGTH: Medium: 86 linesby CNB