## Facts

- Chelmsford High School held a mandatory, school-wide AIDS-awareness assembly in April 1992.
- The presentation was delivered by Suzi Landolphi through Hot, Sexy and Safer Productions, Inc.
- Two students and their parents alleged the 90-minute program used sexually explicit language and student-participation skits.
- Allegations included profane sexual references; statements suggesting “group sexual experience” and approval of masturbation, oral sex, homosexual activity, and condom use during premarital sex.
- Alleged skits and remarks included a student pulling an oversized condom over another student’s head and sexualized comments directed at students during the program.
- Plaintiffs alleged district policies required written parental permission for certain human-sexuality instruction and provided opt-outs for religious reasons, but no notice or opt-out was offered for this assembly.
- Plaintiffs sued the presenter, the production company, and school officials, asserting federal constitutional and Title IX violations.
- The district court dismissed all federal claims under Rule 12(b)(6) and declined supplemental jurisdiction over state claims; plaintiffs appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether mandatory student attendance at a sexually explicit school-sponsored AIDS-education assembly violated parents’ or students’ substantive due process rights to direct upbringing and education.
2. Whether compelled exposure to explicit sexual content at a school assembly violated a constitutional right to privacy or bodily integrity.
3. Whether the mandatory assembly imposed a constitutionally cognizable burden on plaintiffs’ free exercise of religion.
4. Whether lack of notice and an opt-out deprived plaintiffs of liberty or property interests without procedural due process.
5. Whether the assembly’s sexual content and conduct stated a Title IX hostile-environment sexual-harassment claim.

## Decision

- The First Circuit affirmed dismissal of all federal claims.
- The court held parents have no fundamental constitutional right to exempt children from particular public-school programming or curriculum content.
- Compelled attendance at the assembly did not constitute a constitutional invasion of privacy or bodily integrity.
- The assembly, as a neutral educational program of general applicability, did not violate the Free Exercise Clause.
- Plaintiffs failed to identify a federally protected liberty or property interest triggering procedural due process protections; alleged violations of state policies did not, by themselves, create a federal due process claim.
- The complaint did not plausibly allege Title IX harassment “because of sex” or conduct sufficiently severe and pervasive to deny educational access.

## Legal Principles

- Substantive due process protects parental control against state actions that supplant parental authority in a fundamental way, but it does not confer a right to veto discrete components of public-school curriculum or programming.
- Exposure to offensive or explicit ideas in a school setting, without physical intrusion or coercion into sexual conduct, does not establish a constitutional privacy or bodily-integrity violation.
- Under the Free Exercise Clause, neutral and generally applicable school programs that only incidentally conflict with religious beliefs do not trigger heightened scrutiny.
- Procedural due process requires deprivation of a federally protected liberty or property interest; a school’s failure to follow state or local procedures, standing alone, does not create a federal constitutional claim.
- Title IX hostile-environment liability generally requires sex-based conduct that is severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive such that it effectively denies equal access to educational opportunities; a single assembly with sexual content, as alleged, was insufficient on these pleadings.

## Conclusion

The First Circuit held that mandatory attendance at an explicit AIDS-education assembly, even if offensive and contrary to family religious or moral views, did not state federal claims for substantive or procedural due process, privacy, free exercise, or Title IX sexual harassment, and it affirmed dismissal of the action’s federal counts.


Brown v. Hot, Sexy & Safer Prods., Inc., 68 F.3d 525 (1st Cir. 1995)