Wood v. Strickland - American Education

A 1975 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that held a school board member liable for damages for violating the constitutional rights of students. By implication, the ruling applied to school administrators, teachers, counselors and, indeed, all public employees. In effect, it stripped teachers and school administrators of the traditional, arbitrary powers they had held over schoolchildren for centuries under the doctrine of in loco parentis, whereby they acted on behalf of parents and were generally immune from retaliation for violating a child’s constitutional rights. Wood stripped school representatives of that immunity and held them open to civil suits for damages. In Wood, the Court held a school board member liable for damages “if he knew or reasonably should have known that the action he took within his sphere of official responsibility would violate the constitutional rights of the students affected, or if he took the action with the malicious intention to cause a deprivation of constitutional rights or other injury to the student.”