Guidance for student peer sexual harassment? Not!

In 1997, the Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights ("OCR"), enacted guidelines covering a school's obligation under Title IX for student-to-student peer sexual harassment. Although the guidelines were promulgated duping a period of enormous uncertainty among the federal courts over whether a school could be held liable for peer sexual harassment under Title LY, the guidelines were written as if no controversy existed. As the agency responsible for implementing Title LY, the OCR's expertise could have weighed heavily in the coverage debate. In this note, Dan McBride argues that the OCR's guidelines merely codified one side of the Title LY controversy without adding any Agency expertise to the issue of Title IX coverage. Therefore, McBride argues that courts reviewing the question of Title LY coverage should not grant much deference to the OCR guidelines. He goes on to address the difficult issues surrounding Title LX coverage of peer sexual harassment that should have been dealt with by the OCR McBride comments that, at root, there remain theoretical difficulties in applying Title VII case law to Title LY: This note focuses on the theoretical problems underlying student peer sexual harassment and the issues that must be resolved for a sound Title IX policy.