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ALPENA — The Michigan Supreme Court will hear a case involving a lawsuit against Alpena Public Schools in regard to the school district’s response to alleged student-on-student sexual harassment incidents.

An APS representative said Thursday the district cannot comment on active litigation.

The lawsuit — in which a parent claimed the district failed to protect her daughter from a fellow student’s sexual harassment — was dismissed in 2021 after an Alpena judge ruled that a district could not be found responsible under Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, which prohibits gender-based discrimination in schools.

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 appellate court judges felt that not enough evidence was brought against APS to prove that the district handled the alleged incidents improperly.

The appellate court released its decision as a published opinion, meaning that opinion can be cited or relied upon by other courts. Before the Alpena case, higher courts in Michigan had never considered the legal responsibility of a school in the event of sexual harassment between students.

The appellate court’s decision was appealed by Thomas Economy, the attorney representing the parent and her daughter, to the state Supreme Court, which this week ordered its clerk to schedule oral arguments for the case.

“We submitted an application for leave to the Supreme Court,” Economy said Thursday about the court’s decision to hear oral arguments for their case. “We are very pleased that the court granted that application.”

In the lawsuit against the district, the parent claimed APS failed to protect her daughter from sexual harassment from another student and thus violated the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act. The parent claimed that, during the 2017 school year at Besser Elementary School, a boy with a serious language and speech disorder had inappropriately touched and made sexual motions toward her daughter in two separate incidents when both students were in fourth grade.

The boy received several-day suspensions for both incidents and the two students were placed in separate classes. Additionally, after the second incident, the Alpena County prosecutor filed a delinquency petition against the boy. The petition was later dropped when the court deemed that the boy was not competent to participate in court.

The two children attended different schools until junior high, where, at Thunder Bay Junior High School, the girl reported that the boy again acted in a sexual manner. The lawsuit claimed that incident came after a meeting between the mother and the then-principal of Thunder Bay in which the principal assured the mother there would be no contact between the children.

After the incident, administrators said the two students would be kept away from one another moving forward, but the lawsuit claimed the girl and the boy ended up in hallways and on a bus together. Eventually, the girl transferred to another school.