‘Too Black to Come Inside’: Mother Sues Las Vegas School District, Staff After Her Son Allegedly Faced Two Years of Unchecked Racist Taunts and Bullying
The mother of a Black and Asian elementary school student in Las Vegas is suing the Clark County School District, alleging that her son endured nearly two years of racial harassment while school administrators failed to step in and stop it.
Jessica Orta says her son, identified as “I.B.” in the lawsuit filed in federal court on Sept. 22 (and obtained by Atlanta Black Star) was targeted with verbal and physical attacks by classmates, including being called “ni—er” multiple times and one student telling him he was “too black” to walk into O.K. Adcock Elementary School.
A group of students began bullying the then-10-year-old boy in the fall of the 2023 school year, the complaint says, with one boy making repeated comments about his skin color, telling I.B. he was dirty and “Your skin is burnt by the sun.”
Other students allegedly told him, “You eat 15 buckets of fried chicken every day;” “You shower in Kool-Aid;” and “You’re a watermelon muncher.”
Orta says she repeatedly informed school leadership of the race-based attacks on her son, but staff and administrators did not properly document or resolve the situation, resulting in escalating abuse.
After students launched racially motivated insults at I.B. in September of 2023, the school principal, his counselor, and his fourth-grade teacher made the boy confront his aggressors in a “restorative justice circle,” then released the students “without proper supervision and without an effective safety plan for I.B.,” the lawsuit says.
The result was that the boy was “attacked by the students he was forced to confront face to face” over the next several weeks, Orta alleges.
In January of 2024, I.B.’s fourth-grade teacher, Darnell Cardines, created a report identifying him as the victim of aggressive behavior and then required him to confront the students harassing him through a “mediation,” after which his aggressors allegedly physically attacked him.
When Orta later complained about the episode at a Clark County School Board meeting, she said that three boys “surrounded and jumped my son,” forcing him to fight back. All of the students involved were suspended for two days, including I.B.
“Instead of recognizing this as self-defense in response to months of racial harassment, the school treated this incident as mutual combat and suspended him along with the attackers,” she said. “This response ignored the context and further victimized my son in clear violation of [school district policy].”
The harassment continued early in the 2024-2025 school year, the complaint says, when a boy from the same friend group barred I.B. from entering the school, telling him that he was “too black to come inside.”
Now in fifth grade, I.B. was placed in a classroom with a student who had previously harassed him, despite Orta notifying the teacher during a school open house event about the prior abuse, she says.
In November, classmates targeted I.B. again because of his racial features and dark skin color, calling him “Ni—er,” the lawsuit claims. Assistant Principal Matt Landahl said to Orta during a meeting in reference to one of the students targeting I.B., “Well, he is Black, too,” a response that “reflects an attitude of acceptance for intra-racial discrimination and colorism,” the lawsuit says.
The school administrators decided to hold another restorative justice circle in response to the racial harassment, despite being aware that the same group of students had been bullying I.B. for more than a year, and such interventions had proved ineffective, the complaint says.
The abuse continued unabated into 2025, when students in his class allegedly made more racially charged and disparaging remarks toward him, including calling him “ni—er” and “watermelon muncher.” Some of the students admitted to using the slurs. The school’s response was to hold a conference with I.B., the lawsuit says.
Less than a week later, I.B. told Principal Wendy De Mille and Assistant Principal Landahl that a student had repeated the racial epithet and successfully encouraged other non-Black students to bully him, but the school leaders allegedly failed to address his complaint with the offending students.
Instead, they made I.B. sit in the school’s front office in the mornings in lieu of eating breakfast and socializing with his classmates. The lawsuit claims those morning restrictions were not placed on his aggressors, which the lawsuit deems race-based discrimination.
In January 2025, following a meeting with Principal De Mille and representatives of the local NAACP, Orta emailed her concerns to a Clark County School Board trustee representing the elementary school and also voiced her concerns to the entire school board at a public meeting.
She told district officials and meeting attendees that her son had endured racial harassment and bullying since September of 2023, including physical attacks and racial slurs, but despite his reporting the incidents to multiple staff members, “the school failed to take meaningful action,” which had “allowed the harassment to escalate.”
She also said the school had not notified her of investigations or provided safety plans for I.B. following the incidents, in violation of Nevada law and school district policy.
“The sustained harassment has taken a severe toll on my son,” Orta told the school board members. She said his therapist had noted a sharp decline in his confidence and self-esteem since the incidents began, and his grades in math, reading and writing had dropped to Ds despite his placement in a program for gifted students, deterioration which Orta said is “directly tied to the hostile learning environment.”
She asked the board to audit its compliance with district-wide protocols to address racial bullying, to pursue cultural competency training for staff, and “to establish and enforce clear disciplinary measures for repeat offenders to prevent further incidences.”
“My son deserves a safe and supportive education,” Orta said. “But for over a year, he has endured racially motivated harassment with insufficient action from the school board to protect him. … I urge this board to hold the school accountable, enforce existing policies and take meaningful action to ensure my son and other students are protected moving forward.”
On Feb. 13, I.B. was again physically attacked by fellow students because of his race, the lawsuit alleges. School officials responded by conducting another restorative justice meeting as a “reset,” prompting Orta to complain to the district’s Title IX coordinator.
As racially charged verbal attacks against the boy continued through the rest of the school year, and his morale and grades suffered, school leaders continued “acting with deliberate indifference by failing to act in a manner that protected I.B., and/or or failing to cure the unsafe learning environment, and/or failing to end the race-based discrimination,” the lawsuit says.
The complaint, filed by Orta on behalf of her son as lead plaintiff, seeks a jury trial to determine unspecified compensatory, special and punitive damages to address violations of state and federal law by the Clark County School District and eight school and district personnel, including De Mille, Landahl, and Cardines.
The defendants fostered and permitted a racially hostile learning environment and violated I.B.’s due process rights by forcing him to come face to face with his attackers and tormentors in group sessions, then released them without creating an effective safety plan for I.B. or supervision for the offending students, the lawsuit contends, leading to ongoing, unaddressed abuse.
“CCSD’s policies and procedures mandated restorative disciplinary practices in circumstances arising out of race-based discriminatory events without regard for the specific facts and circumstances of each case, which placed I.B. in a position of actual, particularized danger,” the lawsuit says.
School teachers and administrators also failed to intervene in the bullying and harassment, failed to properly investigate and report the incidents and to notify his parents, and the school district failed to adequately train and supervise its staff on how to handle race-based discrimination and bullying, the complaint asserts.
I.B. suffered physical injuries and severe emotional distress over two school years due to the defendants’ collective negligence and breaches of duty, the lawsuit claims.
In a school self-assessment activity intended to identify strengths and talents, I.B. wrote that he has no talents and “My whole class hates me,” the complaint says, noting that the boy began carrying a baseball bat around his house and other locations because of the “unsafe learning environment.”
The school district did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Atlanta Black Star and told other reporters that it has a policy of not commenting on pending litigation.
All of the defendants have 21 days from the time they are served to file a response to the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Nevada.