ALPENA — During oral arguments held in front of the Michigan Supreme Court, a former student accused Alpena Public Schools of creating a sexually hostile educational environment.

The oral arguments were held on Wednesday and the court released video of the proceedings to the public on Thursday.

During oral arguments, the former student, identified only as Jane Doe, was represented by Stephanie Arndt, of Christensen Law in Southfield. APS was represented by Daniel Lobello, of O’Neill, Wallace, and Doyle in Saginaw.

Arndt argued that APS created a hostile environment by failing to take proper action to prevent repeated incidents of sexual harassment against Doe by another student, despite the district’s knowledge that that harassment was occurring.

Doe’s mother says in the lawsuit that, in 2017 at Besser Elementary School, when Doe was in fourth grade, a boy identified only as John Roe had inappropriately touched and made sexual motions toward her daughter in two separate incidents.

Roe received several days’ suspension for both incidents and the two students were placed in separate classes, according to court records. Additionally, after the second incident, the Alpena County prosecutor filed a delinquency petition against Roe. However, the petition was later dropped when the court deemed Roe was not competent to participate in court. Roe had a serious language and speech disorder, according to court records.

The two children would go on to attend different schools until 2018, when at Thunder Bay Junior High School Doe reported that Roe acted in a sexual manner on a bus. Doe’s mother claims in the lawsuit that that incident came after a meeting between the mother and the then-principal of Thunder Bay Junior High School during which the principal assured the mother there would be no contact between the children.

Arndt argued that, under Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, which prohibits gender-based discrimination in schools, APS should be held liable for its repeated failure to protect Doe.

“We ask this court to recognize that Jane Doe had the right to an education free of sexual harassment,” Arndt told the justices, “to hold that educational institutions violate the Elliott-Larson Civil Rights act when they fail to implement prompt and appropriate remedial measures to prevent sexual harass harassment that they know is occurring within their school.”

Lobello argued that the situation of harassment between students doesn’t meet the requirements to be judged by the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, which he argued concerns the actions of those employed by the school, not the students themselves.

“I think the crux of the issue here is that the student — Mr. Roe, in this particular circumstance — cannot be considered an agent of the school,” said Lobello. “Just because there’s mere control doesn’t mean that it meets the rest of the principles necessary to establish agency, which is essentially a delegation of some type of authority for John Roe to act on behalf of the school.”

The initial lawsuit against APS was dismissed in 2021 after an Alpena judge ruled that a district could not be found responsible under the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act.

The case was then heard by the Michigan Court of Appeals in December 2022. The appellate court disagreed with the lower court, claiming the district could be held responsible. However, the Court of Appeals didn’t overturn the lower court’s decision, since the appellate court judges felt that not enough evidence was brought against APS to prove that the district handled the incidents improperly.

According to Arndt, with the conclusions of oral arguments, all that is left is for the Supreme Court justices to determine whether or not they will call for additional information or if they will come to a decision on the case, which could happen anywhere from three to eight months from now.