A Minneapolis charter school primarily serving African American students may be legally liable for failing to vet a gym teacher who sexually assaulted children on a youth basketball team, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
In 2020, a student sued Harvest Best Academy for failing to properly vet the teacher, Aaron Hjermstad, before he was hired in 2016. Hjermstad had been let go from Excell Academy, a Brooklyn Park charter school, in 2015 after another student said he was sexually assaulted by Hjermstad.
Wednesday’s decision could have broad implications for how public schools across the state are responsible for hiring teachers. Schools may look closer at their hiring policies and procedures. They also can be legally liable for making “irresponsible choices,” Jeff Anderson, an attorney whose office is representing the plaintiff in the case, said at a news conference Wednesday.
“We’re not going to give them immunity to pass predators from one school to another and to hire pedophiles without consequence,” Anderson said. “Now that that is the law, there can be accountability for choices made by top administrators across the state of Minnesota.”
A history of assaults
In 2016, the Mastery School in north Minneapolis hired Aaron Hjermstad to be a physical education teacher. According to court documents, when Hjermstad interviewed for the position at Mastery, the school did not call his former employer, Excell Academy in Brooklyn Park. Hjermstad was placed on administrative leave from Excell in 2015 and his contract was not renewed after a student said he was sexually assaulted by Hjermstad. Mastery also did not call any of Hjermstad’s references.
At the time, Mastery was part of a group of charter schools that are now consolidated as Harvest Best Academy. The civil case has been working its way through court for more than four years. Attorneys for the plaintiffs argued their case before the Minnesota Supreme Court more than a year ago.
The school had argued it was shielded from liability because hiring decisions are a policymaking function and thus shielded from lawsuits. But Associate Justice Paul Thissen, writing for the court, rejected that argument.
“We are not convinced that every decision to hire or fire a teacher involves policymaking — the balancing of competing social, economic, political, and financial considerations,” he wrote. “And Best Academy offered no such evidence about Hjermstad’s position in this case.”
He remanded the case to district court for further proceedings, in which the former student and his mother will have the opportunity to press a negligent hiring claim against the school.
Christian Shafer, an attorney representing Harvest Best Academy, told Sahan Journal that his client disagreed with the court’s decision.
“We are reviewing the decision to determine potential next steps in this ongoing litigation,” he said. “The Academy is confident that it will prevail against the remaining claims on remand.”
He ‘hurt a lot of kids’
Hjermstad was convicted in 2021 for sexually assaulting multiple boys on youth basketball teams between 2014 and 2020.
In addition to working at Excell Academy and the Mastery School, he coached basketball at Harvest Best Academy and volunteered at Hospitality House, a faith-based nonprofit in north Minneapolis, where he also coached basketball and baseball.
He is currently serving a 12-year sentence. Hjermstad is white; more than 95% of the students at all three schools where he worked or coached basketball were Black.
The state Supreme Court case emerged after one of Hjermstad’s victims and his mother sued Hjermstad and Harvest Best in 2020. The district court and Court of Appeals dismissed their claims against Harvest Best, arguing that the school was protected under the state’s discretionary immunity law. Wednesday’s Minnesota Supreme Court ruling reversed that dismissal.
Molly Burke, an attorney in Anderson’s office who worked on the case, commended the survivor and his family for coming forward and continuing to pursue the case.
“[Hjermstad] hurt a lot of kids at this school, and the leadership had opportunities to do the right thing, and they didn’t, and instead, they protected themselves and they fought, and they made this survivor fight in court for now four and a half years,” she said.
A ‘planning-level’ decision?
The Minnesota Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the case in October 2023.
During the oral argument, Shafer argued that the school’s principal used her discretion when making the hire. He said the principal was impressed with Hjermstad’s experience in charter schools, and weighed social, political and economic factors.
Under Minnesota law, a governmental entity, such as a charter school, can claim immunity from liability if it weighs these factors for a “planning-level” policymaking decision.
Wil Fluegel, an attorney arguing for the plaintiffs, said the school did not produce any evidence that the principal weighed these factors, and that governmental immunity did not extend to day-to-day decisions like hiring a teacher. He called the decision to hire Hjermstad an “operational failure.”
Multiple justices pushed back on Shafer’s argument.
“As a parent, I would want to expect that if I send my vulnerable children to a school, that they have followed what would be perhaps reasonable policies in their hiring decisions, so that my kids are not exposed to individuals who could do something as horrific as what happened here,” said Associate Justice Anne McKeig.
In the court’s ruling Wednesday, Thissen pointed out that the school’s application process appeared to require letters of recommendation and calls to references, and that it was not clear why the school had stopped following these processes.
“Nothing in the record or in the nature of the decision to stop contacting references suggests that it would be reasonable or appropriate for us to infer (in the absence of evidence) that the decision involved weighing competing economic, political, social, or financial considerations,” he wrote.
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office announced in September 2024 that Hjermstad was indicted by a grand jury for sexually assaulting 12 other boys. According to the County Attorney’s Office, Hjermstad fled Minnesota between his conviction and sentencing date and was arrested by Idaho State Police. When they arrested him, police found thousands of videos of Hjermstad assaulting boys.
Another teacher who worked for Harvest Best, Abdul Wright, was criminally charged in August 2024 for sexually assaulting a student. Wright was named Minnesota Teacher of the Year in 2016.
