In a recent ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, two Oxford Community Schools officials have been cleared of claims suggesting they nudged Ethan Crumbley toward the actions leading to the Oxford High School shooting in 2021. The panel, comprising Judges Raymond Kethledge, Joan Larsen, and Andre Mathis, unanimously decided that school counselor Shawn Hopkins and dean Nicholas Ejak did not demonstrate "callous indifference" towards the perceived dangers posed by Crumbley before the incident, according to ClickOnDetroit.

Central to the panel's conclusion was the question as to whether Hopkins' warning to Crumbley's parents - demanding they get him counseling within 48 hours or face a call to Child Protective Services - increased the risks for the students. After returning him to class with his gun-containing backpack, he was sent back to class, a tragic decision that ended with the loss of four students' lives. As The Detroit News reported, however, the judges found no evidence that the warning itself was "so outrageous" as to violate constitutional rights.

This latest ruling effectively brings a close to the federal civil lawsuits lodged by the families and survivors of the shooting. It overturned, in part, a decision by U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith, who previously allowed the officials to face "state-created danger claims," now rejected by the appeals court. "But those same actions show that Hopkins and Ejak displayed the opposite of callous indifference toward the risk they perceived," Judge Kethledge noted in the opinion, as stated in a release by The Detroit News.

Crumbley is currently serving a life sentence without parole after pleading guilty to the 2021 shooting that killed four of his classmates. His parents, Jennifer and James Crumbley, were handed sentences of 10-15 years after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter.