By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
PHOENIX -- Schools aren't responsible for keeping students safe when they're enroute to school -- or even just outside the school boundaries -- the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.
In a unanimous decision, the justices said schools are liable for providing safe conditions when students are on campus or, at the very least, exercising custody or control over them.
But Chief Justice Ann Scott Timmer said that's not the case when a student is injured while crossing the street -- even one adjacent to the school.
Timmer acknowledged that the Phoenix Union High School District was aware that some parents, seeking to avoid lines, were dropping their youngsters off in a dirt lot across the street from the school. And, in this case, the student was struck by a vehicle while jaywalking across that street, as there was no crosswalk there.
She said none of that, however, creates any sort of legal duty on the school to protect the student from danger.
Tuesday's ruling sets a new statewide precedent.
Timmer said the justices have never addressed this situation before. In fact, the decision overturns a contrary ruling by the state Court of Appeals which had concluded the student's parents did have a right to sue.
According to court records, the student, identified only as CJ, was a freshman at Betty Fairfax High School in Laveen.
The area in the morning, according to Timmer, was hectic, with some parents dropping their kids off in the parking lot adjacent to school. But other parents, seeking to avoid the line into the school grounds, pulled into a dirt lot across 59th Avenue, with the students jaywalking across the street.
"BFHS officials did not tell parents to drop their children off at the dirt lot,'' the justice wrote. "But they were aware of the practice and did nothing to stop or warn parents or students that the practice was unsafe.''
CJ, in jaywalking in August 2021, was struck by a vehicle and suffered serious and permanent injuries.
His father, in filing suit, claimed the district had some control over whether to pursue safer options for students coming and going from school ground or, at least warn students of the traffic dangers.
What's clear in the law, Timmer wrote, is that while schools have a duty to protect students, that is not without limits.
"A school owes a duty to protect students when a known and tangible risk of harm endangers them while under the school's custody and control,'' she wrote. "That duty exists most often when students are injured while at school or participating in off-campus school-sponsored activities.''
But she said there are "rarer circumstances'' where a duty to protect students exists while a student is under the "custody and control'' but an injury occurs while the student is outside that custody and control.
That she said, was not the case here.
Timmer said all the evidence was that the high school had reasonably safe means if ingress and egress, with multiple entrances and exists for pedestrians and vehicle. And she said nothing about these created a "tangible risk of harm'' that endangered CJ and resulted in his injuries.
More to the point, Timmer said, while a risk of harm from jaywalking existed in front of the school "it existed everywhere along the routes students take from home to school.'' Put another way, she said the risk was not created by the configuration of entrances and exists "but from the fact that crossing a street outside a crosswalk creates the risk of being hit by a car.''
And she said the fact that traffic backed up on 59th Avenue due to drivers wanting to go into the parking lot did not make the ingress and egress at the school unreasonably dangerous.
"CJ was not entering BFHS at the time of the accident; he was traveling to a school entrance,'' Timmer wrote.
"This is a distinction with a meaningful difference,'' she said. "A school does not have a duty to protect students from dangers that arise when the school is not exercising custody or control over the student.''
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