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A northern Indiana teacher can be seen on video striking a student who collapses to the floor. The school board has allowed the teacher to retire, but the teacher could face battery charges, Professor Jennifer Drobac told the South Bend Tribune.

Indiana law permits physical discipline but the question for prosecutors is whether the teacher’s actions were “reasonably necessary,” Professor Drobac said in the story. Indiana code allows teachers to “take any action that is reasonably necessary to carry out or to prevent an interference in an educational function.”

“We don’t know the background,” Professor Drobac said in the story. “But I can guess that it should have been reasonably possible for that teacher simply to escort that child to the principal’s office for further discussion and potentially non-physical disciplinary action.”

Professor Drobac is a widely known expert in sexual harassment law. She is an author of the textbook, Sexual Harassment Law: History, Cases and Practice, recently published by Carolina Academic Press. She co-authored the book with Professor Carrie N. Baker of Smith College and Professor Rigel C. Oliveri of the University of Missouri School of Law.  Professor Drobac is at work on her next book, The Myth of Consent, which is under contract with Cambridge University Press. That work will explore the neuroscience of adult decision making and how the science should influence law reform, particularly the law of consent. She is a Samuel R. Rosen Professor of Law.