AINEWS
Lancaster Country Day School's motion argues shared enrollment is the only link to AI fabricated child sexual abuse material by classmates; its own filing admits aiding and abetting case law is split.
A Pennsylvania private school is asking a federal court to throw out a civil suit by the minor students whose male classmates used AI tools to fabricate nude images of them. The school's argument in Does v. Lancaster Country Day School: the only connection to the abuse is that the harassers and the victims all attended the same campus. (Ars Technica)
The criminal chapter is closed. The boys admitted to 59 counts of sexual abuse of a child, a Pennsylvania state-law category that covers fabricated sexual material depicting minors. Each received probation and 60 hours of community service. (Lancaster Online)
The federal civil docket tests a different question. Can a K-12 school be held liable for student-to-student child sexual abuse material (CSAM) made off-campus, off-hours, and off-network? The school's motion to dismiss (PDF) makes three arguments: only the student perpetrators are criminally liable; the sole nexus alleged is shared enrollment; and the complaint does not allege the images were shared in school, during school hours, or using school equipment or internet.
The parents' complaint (PDF) stakes out a separate theory of liability. After a tip was confirmed, the complaint alleges, Lancaster Country Day School (LCDS) failed to "provide adequate support, counseling, and resources to the victims following the abuse." That alleged failure is the basis for the negligent infliction of emotional distress claim, a civil tort that requires the defendant to have owed the plaintiff a duty of care, breached it, and caused harm. The complaint does not turn on whether LCDS could have stopped the original fabrication; it turns on what the school allegedly did, or did not do, after the harm was confirmed.
LCDS's own motion opens with a concession: aiding-and-abetting case law (the doctrine that lets a court hold a non-perpetrator partly responsible for someone else's act) is "split" between circuits. The school's argument is that the split cuts in its favor, because no controlling precedent imposes liability on a school for off-campus student conduct. A federal judge could read the same sentence the other way: the absence of a controlling rule against liability is also the absence of a controlling rule for it.
The motion and the complaint also disagree about what the school knew. The motion characterizes the only connection as shared enrollment. The complaint alleges a tip was confirmed before the school allegedly failed to provide counseling. Whether the court reads that confirmed tip as enough to create a duty of care is the question the motion to dismiss forces the judge to answer. LCDS has not been found liable for anything; this is a threshold ruling on whether the case survives at all.
Two LCDS administrators have departed in the wake of the scandal, WGAL reported (WGAL). The personnel consequence is not a legal admission. The departures sit alongside an adjacent Pennsylvania legislative track, HB2474, which targets AI-generated sexual material involving minors. The bill's specifics are not in the source documents available to this piece and have not been verified here.
The motion to dismiss is the court's first chance to answer whether "shared enrollment" is enough to keep a school in a federal CSAM case. The plaintiffs' counsel files next.