Disabled child's fight for fair treatment could help others - or raise bar for discrimination claims

USA Today

27-04-2025

Disabled child's fight for fair treatment could help others - or raise bar for discrimination claims The case is a being closely watched by disability rights groups who say the courts have created a 'nearly insurmountable barrier' for help sought by schoolchildren and their families.
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A student with a rare form of epilepsy said her school failed to accommodate her need for different instructional hours.
The student won her case under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act but was blocked from suing for damages under two other federal laws.
School officials across the country and advocates for students with disabilities are closely following what standard the Supreme Court will set for such suits.
WASHINGTON − When a Minnesota family took their fight for fair treatment for their disabled daughter to the Supreme Court, they hoped the justices would make it easier for them to hold their school district accountable.
Many lower courts use a tougher standard for discrimination suits related to education than for other allegations pursued through the Americans with Disabilities Act. Gina and Aaron Tharpe want the Supreme Court stop that.
But the district is defending itself in a way that threatens to raise the bar for all victims of disability discrimination, they say.
Lawyers for the Tharpes told the court the Osseo Area School District is pursuing 'a sweeping argument threatening to eviscerate protections for every American who endures disability discrimination – and quite possibly other kinds of discrimination too.'
"No court has ever embraced anything close to the District's new rule," they wrote.
The school district's attorneys say the standard for all claims should be whether there was intentional discrimination.
Otherwise, any negligent or even good-faith failure to give a student with special needs an appropriate education could expose public schools to 'potentially crushing liability,' they told the Supreme Court.
The justices on April 28 will hear that argument.
Closely watched by disability rights groups
The case is a being closely watched by disability rights groups who say the courts have created a 'nearly insurmountable barrier' for help sought by schoolchildren and their families.
But school officials across the country worry that making lawsuits for damages easier to win will create a more adversarial relationship between parents and schools in the difficult negotiations needed to balance a student's needs with a school's limited resources.
Litigation will also shrink those resources, lawyers for a national association of school superintendents and other educational groups told the Supreme Court in urging the justices to 'proceed with caution.'
More: Justice Department asks Supreme Court to rule narrowly on whether the ADA protects retirees
Morning seizures prevented a typical school schedule
The dispute started when the Tharpes moved in 2015 to a Twins City suburb from Tennessee where they said Ava's needs had been accommodated.
Ava has severe cognitive impairment and a rare form of epilepsy. Her seizures are so frequent in the morning that she can't attend school before noon. Ava's Tennessee school shifted her school day so it started in the afternoon and ended with evening instruction at home.
But the Tharpes say her Minnesota school refused to provide the same adjustment. As a result, she received only 4.25 hours of instruction a day, about two-thirds of what non-disabled students received.
And as Ava prepared to enter middle school, that time was going to shrink further.
The Tharpes then went to court.
Ava wins IDEA claim but blocked from other suits
An administrative law judge said the school district's top concern hadn't been Ava's needs but a desire to keep employees from having to work past the traditional end of the school day. The district was required to provide more instruction under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
But while a federal judge backed that decision, the judge said the Tharpes couldn't also use the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to seek compensatory damages and an injunction to permanently set the hours of instruction.
The St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals likewise said their hands were tied because of a 1982 decision from that circuit – Monahan v. Nebraska − that said school officials need to have acted with 'bad faith or gross misjudgment' for suits involving educational services for children with disabilities.
The Tharpes 'may have established a genuine dispute about whether the district was negligent or even deliberately indifferent, but under Monahan, that's just not enough,' the appeals court said.
`Hundreds' of other court cases have applied tougher standard
Hundreds of district court decisions across the country have been litigated under that standard, with most of them ending in a loss for the families, according to Tharpes' attorneys.
Those courts are unfairly using a tougher standard than 'deliberate indifference,' which is the bar for damages in disability discrimination cases outside the school setting, their attorneys argue.
That position is backed by the Justice Department.
School says it made good-faith effort to help Ava
Attorneys for the school district counter that the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act prohibit only intentional discrimination, which is not what happened here. They also say they did not show 'deliberate indifference.'
Although the school declined to provide after-school support at Ava's home, officials said they offered other measures to accommodate her needs while 'effectively utilizing scarce resources shared among all students, including others with disabilities.'
Like many of the nation's 19,000 school districts, they argue, Osseo Area Schools regularly face budget shortfalls and don't have enough staff.
Sometimes a district's best efforts won't be enough, but Congress didn't intend to expose public schools to monetary damages and federal court oversight when good-faith efforts fail to satisfy everyone, they told the Supreme Court.
More: Supreme Court sides against veterans wanting stronger benefit of the doubt review in disability claims
Advocates say more help is needed for students with disabilities
But advocates for children with disabilities say the remedies available under the IDEA aren't always enough.
For example, a deaf student who did not graduate from high school until his mid-twenties in part because his school assigned him a classroom aide who did not know sign language should be able to sue for diminished future job opportunities and wages, they argue.
A Michigan family should be able to recover lost wages and medical expenses because their son's mental health deteriorated after his school failed to assist him with his schoolwork following a month-long, illness-related absence, they said.
'Without these remedies,' they told the court, 'school children subjected to discrimination would be left without full redress for the harms inflicted on them.'