A lawsuit brought by 15 students who survived the Parkland school massacre has been dismissed after a judge ruled that the school district and sheriff's office do not have a constitutional duty to protect students, WPLG Local10 reported.
U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom said in her ruling that students, unlike mental patients and prison inmates, are not in a custodial relationship with the state and thus no legal duty exists to protect them.
The lawsuit singled out school deputy Scot Peterson, who has been harshly criticized for not confronting Nikolas Cruz when he shot to death 17 people and wounded 17 others this past February, according to the Sun-Sentinel.
Peterson was the only armed person at the school.
The lawsuit claimed that “His arbitrary and conscience-shocking actions and inactions directly and predictably caused children to die, get injured, and get traumatized.”
The lawsuit also argued that the Sheriff’s Office and School Board “either have a policy that allows killers to walk through a school killing people without being stopped… [or] have such inadequate training that the individuals tasked with carrying out the polices … lack the basic fundamental understandings of what those policies are such that they are incapable of carrying them out."
Bloom’s ruling dismissing these arguments contrasts with a Broward County judge last week.
In that case, Peterson’s lawyer sought to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the family of one of those killed in the massacre. Broward Circuit Judge Patti Englander Henning rejected his argument that Peterson had “no legal duty” to protect the students and faculty.
Englander Henning found that Peterson, whose job was security, had a duty and an “obligation to act reasonably” under the circumstances.
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