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Whether a state will allow recovery of damages in lawsuits against school districts is a complicated matter. Whether individual school employees can be sued is also a complicated matter, determined by state legislation and case law. State courts typically have held teachers and other individual school employees immune from liability during performance of duties within the scope of their employment. They may, however, be disciplined by their district for inappropriate actions. School employees are not immune from liability for intentional torts or criminal acts.

School-based practitioners have a duty to protect students from reasonably foreseeable risk of harm; psychologists in nonschool settings also may have a professional obligation under the laws of the state where they practice to take steps to protect their clients from self-harm and to forewarn individuals whom their client has threatened to harm. However, where they exist, state laws governing mental health practitioners often use language that requires the psychologist to take preventive actions only in situations suggesting “clear and imminent” danger to the client or a targeted victim. Thus, a difference may exist between school-based practitioners and those in nonschool settings with regard to the threshold for breaking confidentiality of the psychologist–client relationship to protect a student or others from harm (i.e., reasonably foreseeable risk of harm versus imminent danger) (also see ssss1).