by Ralph R. Reiland

About the author: Ralph R. Reiland is associate professor of economics at Robert Morris College in Pittsburgh.

By a 5-4 vote on June 22, 1998, the Supreme Court made it much tougher to hold a school district financially responsible for an employee’s sexual misconduct. “The only way to find a school liable for damages,” wrote Justice Sandra Day O’Connor for the court’s majority, would be to prove that a district official knew of the misconduct of a teacher, administrator, coach or principal and did little or nothing about it.

When School Officials Are Unaware

The case began in 1993 when police in Lago Vista, Texas, found social- studies teacher Frank Waldrop, 52, a former Marine colonel, naked in the woods with student Alida Gebser, 15. There was no...