LOUISVILLE — A federal court's decision to uphold a verdict for a Spencer County girl who was sexually harassed could have a far-reaching impact on the way students are disciplined for such behavior, the girl's attorney said.

        Alma McGowen, now 19, said that despite her repeated complaints, Spencer County school officials did nothing to stop the harassment, which began in the sixth grade and persisted through middle school.

        In 1996, Oliver H. Barber Jr., Ms. McGowen's lawyer, filed a lawsuit against the Spencer County Board of Education in U.S. District Court in Louisville. It was filed under Title IX, which requires schools to provide equal opportunities for boys and girls, and said Ms. McGowen was deprived of her right to public education.

        The lawsuit was one of the first of its kind in the country, and the legal theory has since been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in a similar sexual-harassment case out of Georgia.

        The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati upheld the $220,000 verdict for Ms. McGowen on Nov. 6.

        “It tells superintendents within the 6th Circuit and puts on notice superintendents throughout the United States that they have got to do more than tell kids to shut up,” Mr. Barber said.

        In Ms. McGowen's case, students called her names, touched her, struck her and asked her for sex on a regular basis, according to the opinion by a three-member appeals panel. Once a student stabbed her in the hand with a pencil, and another time, when Ms. McGowen was in the seventh grade, a group of students held her and pulled off her blouse while a boy began to take off his pants and threatened to rape her, the opinion said.

        The boy who stabbed her hand boasted to her later that school officials talked to him but he didn't get in trouble because he was the son of a school board member, the opinion said. Another student, the school principal's nephew, confronted Ms. McGowen in front of other students and demanded to know if she was “gay.”

        On one occasion, an assistant principal advised Ms. McGowen that boys were flirting with her because she was cute and said she should “Be friendly,” the opinion said.

        The decision has national significance because it further defines, under the Supreme Court ruling, when courts may find school officials at fault for failing to act effectively against sexual harassment of students, said Doris Ng, a staff lawyer for Equal Rights Advocates, a San Francisco-based public-interest law firm for women and girls.

        To win her case, Ms. McGowen had to show that school officials knew there was a likelihood she would be harmed by the harassment, yet still failed to act effectively to stop it, Ms. Ng said.

        “The court really makes it clear that if you do something and it doesn't work, you need to do something else,” Ms. Ng said. “That's where the school system failed — they didn't take stronger measures to try to make it stop.”

        Evidence at the trial showed that Spencer County school officials did nothing to stop the harassment other than to talk to the culprits, the appeals court said.

        Robert Chenoweth, a lawyer for the Spencer County School Board, said Thursday he plans to meet with the board to discuss the ruling and that members have not decided whether to appeal it. He said he thinks school officials acted appropriately.

        Mr. Barber said that, given that Supreme Court ruling last year, he sees few options for Spencer County to appeal.

        “I cannot imagine that they will take this to the Supreme Court,” Mr. Barber said. “I think the 6th Circuit shut the door on them.”

        Brad Hughes, a spokesman for the Kentucky School Boards Association, said the association has stressed for the past several years that school officials must have an effective policy and follow it when students allege sexual harassment. In addition to taking effective steps to stop harassment, officials must document it, he said.

        “It doesn't matter if you did it if you can't document it,” he said.

        Mr. Chenoweth declined to discuss whether Spencer County has such a policy.

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