A federal judge has refused to dismiss claims of sex-based discrimination against Jefferson County’s school system and the administrators of a Wheat Ridge middle school where sexual harassment and assaults were reportedly endemic.

Following the civil rights lawsuit from a former student and her mother last year, Everitt Middle School told parents that “most of the allegations, if not all of them, have no merit.” But U.S. District Court Judge Christine M. Arguello did not agree with that assertion.

On Tuesday, she allowed four legal claims to proceed against Jefferson County School District R-1 and the former leaders of Everitt. Arguello also denied them immunity, finding Principal Jeff Gomez and Assistant Principal William “Tim” Carlin reportedly knew about the alleged violation of the student’s rights and did nothing to prevent it. (Carlin is now the principal at Peak Expeditionary School at Pennington in Wheat Ridge.)

The Haystack, the news site for Wheat Ridge High School, also spoke to alumni of Everitt after the lawsuit was filed who corroborated the middle school’s casual “rape culture.”

“In some ways, this is the beginning of the case,” said Milo Schwab, attorney for the plaintiffs, on Thursday.

A student identified as S.T.C. attended Everitt and reportedly experienced harassment from two boys on more than 60 occasions during her time there. Specific allegations included groping in hallways and the boys sticking their hands inside her shirt and underwear. Reportedly, these assaults were part of a longstanding tradition, known to staff and administrators, of touching girls’ breasts and buttocks during certain days of the week.

In May 2017, S.T.C.’s mother learned about the boys’ assaults. She reported them to Wheat Ridge police and raised the issue with the school’s administrators. Reportedly, Carlin responded, “boys do that to show you that they like you.” S.T.C. withdrew from a class she attended with the boys and was unable to take the final exam.

S.T.C. reportedly became suicidal over summer break when the boys harassed her for reporting them. Police could not obtain a restraining order because Carlin allegedly refused to hand over the incident file. Upon returning to school, the harassment continued and caused S.T.C. to leave Jeffco Public Schools entirely.

She and her mother sued the school district as well as Carlin and Gomez for various violations of Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in education. They also asserted constitutional claims for the administrators’ deliberate indifference to sexual harassment and failure to train staff to protect children from assault.

Lawyers for the defendants contended that S.T.C. failed to show the school district knew about the behavior. They also argued that Gomez and Carlin deserved qualified immunity, which shields government employees from liability unless they violate a clearly-established legal right.

“Gomez and Carlin were aware that every female student who passed through the hallways of Everitt was at a substantial risk of being sexually assaulted,” S.T.C. and her mother responded to the district’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit. “And in spite of this knowledge, Gomez and Carlin acquiesced to this culture, resulting in S.T.C.’s weekly sexual harassment and assault.”

In evaluating the case in February of this year, U.S. Magistrate Judge S. Kato Crews recommended dismissing three of the claims and allowing three more to continue. Crews agreed that S.T.C. had alleged a plausible case of deliberate indifference under Title IX and the U.S. Constitution, given the school’s reported knowledge of both the longstanding culture of boys harassing girls as well as the specific treatment S.T.C. endured.

“This conduct occurred openly in front of teachers without recourse. And it was pervasive enough that even local law enforcement was aware of TTT and SAF and previously tried to intervene,” Crews wrote, referring to the nicknames students gave to Tuesdays and Fridays when boys would touch breasts and slap buttocks, respectively.

Crews also found that the school district, Gomez and Carlin reportedly knew of the harm to students and failed to train staff accordingly. The defendants claimed that S.T.C. needed to also prove the harassment and assaults deprived her of educational opportunities. Crews disagreed.

“Plaintiffs have alleged severe, pervasive, objectively offensive sexual harassment of which the School District was aware and yet did nothing. No additional deprivations are necessary,” he wrote, adding that even if he were to entertain that argument, S.T.C. had clearly been affected in her schooling.

Arguello this week adopted Crews’s recommendations, with one exception. The magistrate judge found S.T.C. had not plausibly shown she was treated differently from someone in a similar situation in violation of equal protection under the law. Crews believed that would require S.T.C. to show how a male student who reported sexual harassment had a different outcome than her.

Arguello instead sided with S.T.C.’s reasoning: that compared to her male assailants, the school prevented S.T.C. from taking or finishing certain classes while allowing the boys to do so, and the decision was largely based on sex.

“[R]equiring Plaintiffs to allege that the school treated male sexual assault victims more favorably than female sexual assault victims would place a nearly impossible burden on Plaintiffs,” Arguello wrote in a September 28 order.

At the time of the lawsuit’s filing, the Golden Transript reported that some parents were unsurprised at descriptions of the middle school’s culture. Sara Hood told the Transcript that her adult stepson still recalled similar instances of harassment when he attended Everitt a decade ago.

“That was going on when he went there. It’s the same stuff,” Hood said.

Jeffco Public Schools did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The case is A.C. v. Jefferson County R-1 School District et al.