WASHINGTON (AP) — A teenage girl with a rare form of epilepsy won a unanimous Supreme Court ruling on Thursday that’s expected to make it easier for families of children with disabilities to sue schools over access to education.
The girl’s family says that her Minnesota school district didn’t do enough to make sure she has the disability accommodations she needs to learn, including failing to provide adequate instruction in the evening when her seizures are less frequent.
But lower courts ruled against the family’s claim for damages, despite finding the school had fallen short. That’s because courts in that part of the country required plaintiffs to show schools used “bad faith or gross misjudgment,” a higher legal standard than most disability discrimination claims.
The family appealed to the Supreme Court. The district, Osseo Area Schools, said that lowering the legal standard could expose the country’s understaffed public schools to more lawsuits if their efforts fall short, even if officials are working in good faith.
The district also argued that all claims over accommodations for people with disabilities should be held to the same higher standard — a potentially major switch that would have been a “five-alarm fire” for the disability rights community, the girl’s lawyers said.
Her attorney Roman Martinez, of Latham & Watkins, called Thursday’s ruling a win for the family and “children with disabilities facing discrimination in schools across the country.” He added that “it will help protect the reasonable accommodations needed to ensure equal opportunity for all.”
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