Parents and children have a lot of details to keep track of during back-to-school time: School clothes, textbooks and supplies, classroom schedules, immunizations and sports physicals.

Teachers have their own back-to-school paperwork to tackle. This week, all public schoolteachers in Indiana are receiving an important legal notice from my office that they should read and that parents and schoolchildren also should be aware of.

The legal notice reminds teachers of Indiana’s Teacher Protection Act, passed by the Indiana General Assembly in 2009. Teachers now are shielded from frivolous lawsuits filed over school discipline complaints.

In other words, if a teacher is sued for disciplining a student – and if the teacher’s actions were reasonable under the school policy – then the teacher has legal immunity from the lawsuit. The Indiana Attorney General’s Office will step in and provide a legal defense for the teacher, at no cost to him or her or to their school corporation.

This year-old law, also known as Public Law 121-2009, was passed due to concerns that teachers were reluctant to discipline students out of fear parents would sue them. If a scuffle broke out between two teens in the school cafeteria, then the nearest teacher might hesitate to intervene and break up the fight – particularly if the brawling combatants were the opposite sex of the teacher. “My dad will sue you,” is one threat teachers said they heard.

If parents indeed filed suit, then the school insurance carrier’s typical response was to cut the plaintiffs a settlement check for as much as $1,500 to make the case go away. Settling out of court would end that lawsuit; but as word spread, it would undermine the teacher’s credibility the next time she or he had to discipline a student.

Thanks to our new Teacher Protection Act, educators no longer need fear frivolous lawsuits, since lawyers in my office will defend them in civil court. The State of Indiana will assume the legal risk, meaning school administrators and their liability insurance carriers no longer ought to have to pay out nuisance settlements in such cases.

I believe that the Teacher Protection Act serves as a deterrent – that plaintiff’s lawyers are now more reluctant to file suit on behalf of parents of unruly children since they know they are likely to lose the case. The qualified legal immunity for teachers, coupled with legal representation by the Attorney General’s Office, means that teachers now are in a much stronger legal position when school discipline disputes arise. I hope that this deterrence of lawsuits in turn will embolden teachers to impose reasonable classroom discipline without fear. And I hope it will remind parents that respect for authority starts in the home, and parental discipline and school discipline should complement and not undercut the other.

As my legal notice sent to teachers explains, the Teacher Protection Act was strongly supported by teachers, administrators, Gov. Mitch Daniels, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett and me as your attorney general; and it passed the Indiana General Assembly unanimously. As a continuation of the focus on discipline in the classroom, legislators this year also created a committee that will study school policing issues and report back to them with recommendations.

While I hope the new school year will be safe and incident-free, any teacher who is named in a school-discipline lawsuit is asked to call my office at 317-232-6310, so one of my deputy attorneys general can represent them in court.

For information, go to my website at www.in.gov/attorneygeneral/2467.htm.