TRENTON – An appellate panel ruled Dec. 8 that New Jersey’s antidiscrimination law applies to children victimized by bias-based bullying and that schools can be held liable for it.

The panel upheld a $50,000 award to a Toms River boy who endured anti-gay taunts from classmates despite the school district’s punishment of some of them. But it struck down a $10,000 award that the state Division on Civil Rights had ordered the district to pay his mother.

The American Civil Liberties Union applauded the ruling by the Appellate Division of Superior Court, saying children have a right to a harassment-free school.

“Today’s decision ensures that children receive the same protections in their schools that their parents receive in the workplace,” said Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the ACLU-New Jersey.

But the district’s lawyer said that children and schools could not be held to the same standards as workplaces and employers, and that the district would appeal.

The case, which dates to 1999, involved a student identified only as L.W., who was perceived to be gay and was harassed and assaulted by classmates beginning in fourth grade. According to the ruling, he was slapped, punched and struck with a neck chain by students at various times.

His mother complained to school officials, and an assistant principal at Toms River Intermediate West identified some of the children responsible, telling them more than once that their behavior was inappropriate and giving one of them detention, the ruling said.

The boy was harassed twice when he attended Toms River South High School, and his tormentors were suspended even though the confrontations had occurred off campus.

After his mother filed a complaint, the Division on Civil Rights found that even though at least 18 students had harassed the boy in four months, the district, which is in Ocean County, did not put all students on notice that such behavior was unacceptable.

The division’s director awarded $50,000 to the boy and $10,000 to his mother for emotional distress. The three-judge appeals panel, in a split decision, upheld the award to the boy, struck down the award to his mother, and found that the school district should not have to take “remedial measures” to train employees to better recognize peer harassment on the basis of sexual orientation.

In the dissent, Justice Edwin R. Alley said that school officials had been supportive of L.W. and that hostility did not characterize the conduct or attitude of the school.

“We went out of our way to help this student, and we think the decision of the dissenting judge is correct,” said Thomas E. Monahan, a lawyer for the Toms River Board of Education.

He said antidiscrimination laws were more easily enforced with adults than with children.

“You can fire people in the workplace. People are supposed to know the rules,” Monahan said. “But do we throw out the student who says that? Do we expel them, or do we try to educate them?”

In 2002, the New Jersey Board of Education required each district to adopt a policy prohibiting harassment, intimidation and bullying on school property, at school-sponsored functions and on school buses.