Year and a half after ‘slave auction’ scandal, Southwick faces racism lawsuit

SOUTHWICK ― More than a year after a bullied student forced the community to confront racism in the schools, a lawsuit now accuses the Southwick district of allowing racial harassment to persist unchecked.

The suit filed Friday in Hampden Superior Court by the Boston-based group Lawyers for Civil Rights claims that the Southwick-Tolland-Granville Regional School District failed to protect a middle schooler from repeated racial harassment by classmates.

Identified in court documents as Jane Doe, the student allegedly endured racial bullying during the 2023-2024 school year — leaving her emotionally distressed and academically behind.

Her mother, identified as Janet Doe, accuses the district of ignoring repeated complaints — claiming that its negligence caused her daughter to suffer personal injury. The plaintiffs are seeking monetary damages and additional relief through a jury trial.

The district did not respond to requests for comment.

The circumstances of the case echo widely publicized incidents of racial harassment in Southwick in 2023 and 2024.

Early last year, the family of student Skyla Lopez filed a federal civil rights complaint , after her daughter was allegedly targeted in a mock "slave auction" conducted online by classmates at Southwick Regional School.

The incident, which circulated on Snapchat, sparked outrage in the community and led to criminal charges against six students and drew condemnation from civil rights advocates, including the NAACP of Greater Springfield.

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education later found that the district failed to properly investigate and respond to multiple racist incidents , violating Title IX regulations.

The state has since ordered the district to revise its bullying policies and improve its procedures for handling discrimination complaints .

The Southwick-Tolland-Granville district serves preschool through grade 12; about 88.9% of students are white, and 1.3% of students are Black.

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