Latino Student Awarded $1 Million for High School Harassment

By Victor Landa, NewsTaco

For almost three and one half years Anthony Zeno put up with racial harassment at his rural New York High School, until he could take it no longer, left, and earned a high school equivalency certificate.

But his ordeal, and his repeated unanswered complaints to school officials, were enough for Zeno and his family to file a suit against the school system. He won an initial $1 million award, the district appealed and the award was upheld.

According to a report in the Christian Science monitor, in its final decision the US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City unanimously declared:

 “We conclude there was sufficient evidence in the record to support the jury’s finding that the District’s responses to student harassment of Anthony amounted to deliberate indifference to discrimination,” Judge Denny Chin wrote for the unanimous panel.

Zeno transferred from his school in Long Island to Stissing Mountain High School in Pine Plains, New York in his freshman year. That’s when the harassment began and became worse with each subsequent year.

The school had minority attendance of less than five percent, and many students used Zeno’s ethnic heritage as a basis to taunt, harass, menace, and physically assault him.

“His peers made frequent pejorative references to his skin tone, calling him a ‘nigger’ nearly every day,” Judge Chin said.

“They also referred to him as ‘homey’ and ‘gangster,’ while making reference to his ‘hood’ and ‘fake rapper bling bling.’ ”

Chin continued: “He received explicit threats as well as implied threats, such as references to lynching.”

Zeno’s lawyers prevailed in proving that the school’s authorities were “deliberately indifferent” to the racial harassment and that Zeno was, according to the CSM, “deprived of a supportive, scholastic environment free of racism and harassment.”

In the end, the school’s attorneys argued that the award was excessive, given the alleged suffering. But the court disagreed:

“Anthony was not an adult losing sleep due to workplace stress,” Chin said. “Rather, he was a teenager being subjected – at a vulnerable point in his life – to 3 1/2 years of racist, demeaning, threatening, and violent conduct.”

The judge added: “Given the severity, duration, and egregiousness of Anthony’s unchecked harassment, his [$1 million] award was not outside the range of permissible decisions.”