Colombo v. Palo Alto Unified School District

Background

Peter Colombo alleged that Palo Alto Unified School District and four district officials—Don Austin, Lisa Hickey, Amanda Bark, and Trent Bahadursingh—violated his rights after a former middle-school student accused him of raping her during the 2001–2002 school year. The district placed Colombo on administrative leave while criminal charges and an internal investigation proceeded. The criminal charges were eventually dropped. On May 28, 2024, the district reported that its investigator found the allegation unsubstantiated because of a lack of evidence. Colombo returned from leave on July 30, 2024, after more than two and a half years, but the district placed him in a non-teaching position whose daily tasks allegedly did not use his teaching credential or experience.

Colombo’s third amended complaint asserted four claims: a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the individual defendants for procedural and substantive due-process violations; discrimination claims against the district under Title VII, the Fair Employment and Housing Act, and Title IX; and retaliation theories under those same statutes. The defendants moved to dismiss the due-process and discrimination claims, asserted qualified immunity on the § 1983 claim, and moved to strike new retaliation allegations.

Procedural Due Process and Section 1983

The court granted the motion to dismiss Colombo’s substantive due-process claim. Colombo did not plausibly allege that the defendants’ conduct met the demanding standard for a substantive due-process violation, which requires conduct that shocks the conscience or interferes with rights central to ordered liberty.

The court denied dismissal of Colombo’s procedural due-process claim based on a property interest in a position similar in nature and rank to his tenured teaching position. Under California law, the court explained, a tenured teacher may have a protected property interest in employment within the scope of the credential under which tenure was acquired. Colombo plausibly alleged that the district removed him from that type of position and instead assigned duties far outside the scope of his credentialed teaching role. He also plausibly alleged that he was not given adequate notice or a hearing before that deprivation. The court emphasized that this theory did not establish a right to a specific physical-education position or necessarily to any teaching position, but to a position of the same nature as the position in which he acquired tenure.

The court rejected Colombo’s separate theory that due process gave him a right to evidence collected or withheld during the criminal and internal investigations. It concluded that he did not identify a constitutional obligation requiring school-district officials to disclose evidence in the manner required of prosecutors, did not adequately allege that any withheld evidence was material, and did not establish a due-process right based on the statutes and regulations he cited.

The court also denied in part the motion to dismiss Colombo’s stigma-plus procedural due-process claim against Austin and Hickey and granted in part the motion as to Bark and Bahadursingh. A stigma-plus claim concerns a public, seriously damaging charge connected to the alteration of a protected right or status, together with the denial of notice and a meaningful opportunity to clear one’s name. The court found Colombo’s allegations about public statements by Austin and a letter sent by Hickey to the state teacher-credentialing commission sufficient at the pleading stage. Because Colombo alleged that Austin and Hickey made the statements causing the alleged liberty-interest deprivation, the claim proceeded against them but not against Bark or Bahadursingh.

The court declined to dismiss the procedural due-process claim based on qualified immunity. It stated that the qualified-immunity arguments would benefit from more targeted briefing and factual support after the pleadings were settled.

Discrimination Claims

The court granted the motion to dismiss Colombo’s discrimination claims under Title VII and the Fair Employment and Housing Act. Colombo alleged that the district used an Equity Plan and unsubstantiated sexual-misconduct allegations to target white male teachers and pressure them into early retirement. The court found those allegations facially implausible and insufficiently specific. Among other problems, Colombo did not allege that non-white or non-male employees facing similar misconduct allegations were treated more favorably, did not clearly identify the protected group or the alleged employment policy, and did not provide enough facts comparing the treatment of the three white male teachers he identified with other employees.

The court also granted the motion to dismiss Colombo’s Title IX discrimination claim. It concluded that his allegations described possible procedural violations in the district’s investigation but did not plausibly show discrimination based on sex in his particular case.

The dismissed discrimination claims were dismissed without leave to amend. The opinion states that Colombo had amended his complaint three times, twice after receiving feedback from the court.

Retaliation Allegations and Disposition

The defendants’ motion to strike the expanded retaliation allegations under Title VII, the Fair Employment and Housing Act, and Title IX was denied. The court found that the defendants did not identify the specific allegations to be stricken or show that they were redundant, immaterial, impertinent, or scandalous. The court also found that the defendants did not establish that the new allegations were improper, implausible, or inconsistent with Colombo’s existing retaliation theories.

In summary, the court granted in part and denied in part the motion to dismiss. For the § 1983 claim, dismissal was granted as to substantive due process; dismissal was denied as to the procedural due-process theory based on a property interest in a position similar to Colombo’s tenured teaching role; dismissal was denied as to the stigma-plus claim against Austin and Hickey; and dismissal was granted as to the stigma-plus claim against Bark and Bahadursingh. The motion to dismiss the Title VII, Fair Employment and Housing Act, and Title IX discrimination claims was granted. The motion to strike the retaliation allegations was denied. The defendants were ordered to answer the remaining claims by April 10, 2025.