HIGH COURT REJECTS STUDENT HARASSMENT CASE.

Byline: Aaron Epstein Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

Debra Rowinsky says her two teen-age daughters were repeatedly taunted, grabbed and squeezed by boys in school buses, classes and hallways in a pattern of gross behavior that school officials in Bryan, Texas, allegedly knew about but failed to stop.

On Monday, the Supreme Court opened its 1996-97 term by refusing to hear more than 1,550 cases accumulated over the summer - including Rowinsky's plea to permit students who were sexually harassed by other students to obtain damages from indifferent school districts and officials.

The Clinton administration, civil rights and feminist groups, claiming that serious incidents of sexual harassment of students by their peers have become common, urged the justices to hear the nationally watched case and hold school districts liable for failing to take action.

Instead, the justices, without comment, left intact a lower court's ruling that makes it extremely difficult to hold school districts legally responsible for student-against-student harassment.

``This issue is far from finished,'' said Julie Goldscheid, a lawyer for the National Organization for Women's Legal Defense Fund. ``We feel confident that the courts ultimately will see this as a grave problem to be treated just as seriously as harassment in the workplace.''

The high court also:

Refused to give Theodore Kaczynski, accused of eight of the 16 bombings linked to the so-called Unabomber, a chance to escape prosecution by arguing that news leaks poisoned his chance of getting a fair trial. Prosecutors leaked information that Kaczynski's diary contained detailed admissions. A federal judge called the leaks ``regrettable'' but found no evidence of intent to prejudice the public against Kaczynski.

Heard arguments in a major free-speech case, leaving the impression that it is likely to strike down a 1992 federal law requiring cable television operators to carry local stations.

Rowinsky's case was turned away at a time when the nation's school districts are beset by cases of sexual harassment, and judges are divided over whether negligent school districts may be forced to pay damages under federal law.

U.S. Department of Education investigators are looking into complaints of sexual harassment of students by students in about 80 school districts.

``We're getting a lot of suits about this, both filed and threatened,'' said Gwendolyn Gregory, a lawyer for the National School Boards Association. ``It's a real mess.''

The school boards' view, she said, is that ``You can't impute the actions of a kid to the school district.''

In 1992, the Supreme Court unanimously agreed in a Georgia case that students could recover damages from school districts for sexual discrimination by teachers or other employees. The question now is whether schools are legally responsible for failing to take steps to eliminate known patterns of sexual harassment when students - not school employees - are the culprits.