QUESTION
What legal recourse do I have for recurring racial discrimination and harassment my children are subjected to at school?
Asked on Jan 05th, 2013 on Civil Rights - Pennsylvania
More details to this question:
My children are experiencing repeated racial and physical abuse at school from other students and teachers are not addressing the students that are perpetrating the racial discrimination and physical abuse. Currently my daughter is being harassed by a white student, he is calling her a dirty Mexican bitch and hitting her. She is not the only minority student he is harassing; no action is taken against the student because his parents are teachers at the same school. My daughter last year was sexually assaulted by a male white student and the school failed to immediately act when my daughter reported it. In May of 2011 my son was a victim of racial discrimination and harassment when a white student call him a spick and then again in September 2011. I filed a civil rights complaint with the DOE OCR. There was a resolution, but as you can see the school district still is failing to act and deter racial discrimination and harassment.
1 ANSWER
Keith Edward Kendall
The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission ("PHRC") is the state agency authorized by state law to enforce Pennsylvania's anti-discrimination laws. If your children are being subjected to racial and/or national origin harassment and/or discrimination, you should file a complaint with the local branch of that agency. In the process, that agency will "dual file" the complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC"), which is the federal agency authorized and tasked, under federal law, with enforcing federal anti-discrimination laws.
Answered on Jan 07th, 2013 at 8:52 AM