## Facts

- Tommy R. Schroeder was a public-school teacher employed by the Hamilton (Wisconsin) School District and taught at Templeton Middle School beginning in 1990.
- After his homosexuality became widely known (beginning in the 1993–94 school year), Schroeder experienced escalating harassment by students and others, including slurs, accusations of having AIDS, obscene comments, threatening encounters, anonymous phone calls, and graffiti.
- Schroeder repeatedly reported incidents to administrators and sought broader preventive measures, including training that explicitly addressed harassment based on sexual orientation.
- The record showed that when perpetrators were identified, the district disciplined them; much of the harassment was anonymous and went unpunished because the perpetrators could not be identified.
- Schroeder transferred to another school within the district, but harassment continued; he later suffered a mental breakdown, resigned in February 1998, sought disability benefits, and the district terminated his employment at the end of the 1998–99 school year under his contract.
- Schroeder sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that administrators violated equal protection by responding less vigorously to anti-gay harassment than to race- or sex-based harassment and by maintaining policies and trainings that addressed race and sex discrimination but not sexual-orientation discrimination.

## Issues

1. Whether the district and administrators violated the Equal Protection Clause, enforceable through 42 U.S.C. § 1983, by allegedly failing to take reasonable measures to prevent harassment directed at Schroeder because of his homosexuality.
2. Whether Schroeder produced sufficient evidence that defendants acted with intentional discrimination or deliberate indifference by treating his harassment complaints less favorably than comparable complaints by non-homosexual teachers.

## Decision

- The Seventh Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the district and individual administrators.
- The court held Schroeder failed to present evidence permitting a finding of intentional discrimination or deliberate indifference tied to his sexual orientation.
- The record reflected that the district responded to reported incidents by disciplining identified students and that anonymous misconduct limited further enforcement.
- The court found Schroeder lacked comparative evidence that similarly situated non-homosexual teachers received more vigorous responses to analogous harassment.
- Differences in policies or trainings (race/sex addressed expressly, sexual orientation not) did not, without proof of discriminatory differential treatment, establish an equal-protection violation.

## Legal Principles

- An equal-protection claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 requires proof of differential treatment because of class membership; negligence or imperfect remedial efforts do not suffice.
- A plaintiff must show officials responded less vigorously to his complaints than to comparable complaints by others and that the disparity was motivated by hostility or deliberate indifference based on the protected status.
- Persistence of harassment, standing alone, does not establish unconstitutional deliberate indifference, particularly where misconduct is anonymous and perpetrators cannot be identified.
- The Equal Protection Clause does not require a public employer to adopt particular policies or trainings as a constitutional minimum; liability turns on discriminatory intent or deliberately indifferent differential treatment.

## Conclusion

The Seventh Circuit concluded that, despite serious harassment, Schroeder did not present evidence that school officials intentionally or deliberately treated his complaints worse because he was gay, and the defendants were therefore entitled to summary judgment on the § 1983 equal-protection claim.


Schroeder v. Hamilton Sch. Dist., 282 F.3d 946 (7th Cir. 2002)