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7 December 2004 – 2006 and after · PENN-HARRIS-MADISON — THIS IS OSCEOLA'S OWN SCHOOL CORPORATION'S CASE
This row needs no boundary apology: the case arose at Penn High School, in the Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation that serves Osceola, and the screening was administered by this county's own designated centre. On 7 December 2004 Chelsea Rhoades, 15, a sophomore at Penn High School, was given the TeenScreen mental-health examination — a yes/no questionnaire administered by Madison Center personnel as a suicide-prevention screening in use at several St. Joseph County schools from 2004 — and was told she suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder and social anxiety disorder. The school had used “passive consent”: parents were asked to reply in writing only if they did not want their child screened. The Rhoades family said they never received the letter and never consented. TeenScreen was a Columbia University programme, endorsed as a model by the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health; the family's suit, filed in federal court in September 2005 by Rutherford Institute attorneys (complaint filed 19 September 2005), charged violations of parental rights, family integrity and privacy, and of the federal Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment and Indiana law, which require written parental consent for such examinations. (Health privacy discipline: the plaintiffs named themselves publicly in court and press; no other screened student's name or result appears anywhere in this section.)
The holdings, separated by court and date — printed whole, never merged. In Rhoades v. Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation (U.S. District Court, Northern District of Indiana, 2006), on Madison Center's motion, the court held that some claims were not medical-malpractice claims — counts alleging violations of statutory consent requirements and privacy/parental rights do not require a physician–patient relationship or malpractice proof and are outside Indiana's Medical Malpractice Act — while other counts were dismissed as malpractice claims subject to that Act's prior-review requirements. In the later ruling carried in the Tribune and Rutherford Institute reports (Judge James T. Moody), the district court denied the school corporation's request for dismissal and let the constitutional claims proceed to trial, upholding the family's right to sue over the screening without consent; TeenScreen was by then no longer in use at P-H-M. The programme's own course closes the line: TeenScreen switched to active parental consent nationally in 2006 and closed in 2012. No final trial verdict is asserted here — the open record reached establishes the two rulings above, and they are printed at exactly that strength.
Sources: Rhoades v. Penn-Harris-Madison School Corp., N.D. Ind. (2006) (malpractice / non-malpractice holdings); BMJ 2005;331:714 (suit filed 19 Sept. 2005; screening Dec. 2004, Penn High School); Rutherford Institute reports and South Bend Tribune coverage of Judge Moody's denial of dismissal; TeenScreen programme course (active consent 2006; closed 2012).