The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in favor of a teenage girl with epilepsy and her parents, who sued a Minnesota school system, saying that her school failed to provide her with as much education as her peers.
The issue revolved around the level of proof necessary to demonstrate discrimination by public schools in education-related disability cases, the New York Times reported.
In a unanimous decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court ruled that the student and her family merely needed to establish that the school system behaved with “deliberate indifference” to her educational requirements when they sued.
This is the same criterion used when people sue other institutions for disability discrimination.
The school district contended that a higher standard—a demanding requirement that the institution acted with “bad faith or gross misjudgment”—should apply. Had the district won, the new threshold may have extended to all types of disability rights claims brought under the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
That argument had alarmed some disability rights organizations, who had warned that a victory for the school may make it far more difficult for Americans with disabilities to successfully appeal court decisions.
As a consequence of the verdict, the student will be entitled to pursue her case in lower courts.
The chief judge stated that, while the ruling was “narrow,” it was vital for children with impairments and their families.
“Together they face daunting challenges on a daily basis,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote, adding that the court decision meant that “those challenges do not include having to satisfy a more stringent standard of proof” than other people who bring court challenges under federal disability rights laws.
The case, A.J.T. v. Osseo Area Schools, No. 24-249, arose from a disagreement about whether the district, near Minneapolis, had made reasonable adjustments for Ava Tharpe, whose severe epilepsy made it difficult for her to attend school and participate during regular hours.
After Ava’s family relocated to Minnesota from Kentucky, her parents requested that she be permitted to attend nighttime education due to her impairment, as she did in Kentucky. In court documents, the family stated that the school system informed them that it would be unable to meet the request, resulting in Ava receiving only 65 percent of her classmates’ instructional time.
A federal judge partially sided with the school district. The judge concluded that under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act — federal legislation that requires public entities and organizations that receive federal funding to provide reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities — the Tharpe family had to show that the school district acted with either “bad faith” or “gross misjudgment.”
The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit upheld the judgment, and the Tharpe family filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, claiming that the courts had applied the incorrect criterion. They cited many other appeals courts that had used a lesser burden of proof in similar situations, requiring just that the institution demonstrate “deliberate indifference” to her needs.
The family’s attorneys said in their court petition that the case was “an exceptionally important issue for children with disabilities and their families” and that educational inequality “often has life-altering consequences for children with disabilities.”
The attorneys stated that the case posed “one core question”: whether children with disabilities who filed education-related discrimination complaints were subjected to a more onerous standard than those who sued under federal disability legislation.
“It is inconceivable that when Congress enacted laws to combat disability discrimination, it silently singled out school-age children — perhaps the most vulnerable subset of people with disabilities — for disfavored treatment,” lawyers for the family argued in a brief.
The school district asked the justices not to hear the case, claiming that the system had “reasonably responded to the disagreement” over the length of Ava’s school day “by making persistent efforts” to remedy the matter.
The district added that although Ava’s parents “disagree with some decisions the district made,” the family’s frustrations did “not evince discriminatory intent under any standard used in any circuit.”