Citing the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting and noting that “[v]iolent unprovoked attacks by and against college students, while still relatively uncommon, are happening more frequently,” the Supreme Court today holds that colleges and universities “have a special relationship with their students and a duty to protect them from foreseeable violence during curricular activities.” The court’s opinion by Justice Carol Corrigan — for herself and five other justices — comes in Regents of the University of California v. Superior Court, which concerns a stabbing by one student of another during a chemistry lab at UCLA after school administrators learned, among other things, that the attacking student was suffering from serious mental illness, including having delusions about other students ridiculing and threatening him.
The court does place limits on school responsibilities. Assuring that “[c]olleges are not the ultimate insurers of all student safety,” the opinion states there can be a duty to protect or warn “only in the context of school-sponsored activities over which the college has some measure of control.” Also, the court leaves open the question what the appropriate standard of care is, whether UCLA breached that standard in this case, and whether governmental immunity statutes bar UCLA’s liability.
Justice Ming Chin, in a concurring opinion, says the majority’s liability limits are not enough. He disagrees with the majority’s extending a duty to protect or warn “beyond the classroom, to encompass more broadly ‘curricular activities’ . . . and activities ‘closely related to [the] delivery of educational services.’”
The court reverses the Second District, Division Seven, Court of Appeal, which had divided 2-1 on the case. It also disapproves a 1981 Fifth District decision, 1990, 1999, and 2003 Third District decisions, and a 1991 decision by the First District, Division Two.
