US Supreme Court hears oral arguments in consequential disability rights case – JURIST
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Monday in a disability-rights appeal brought on behalf of a student and her parents against their school district, alleging their child did not receive fair accommodations for their child’s disability.
The case, A.J.T. v. Osseo Area Schools, No. 24-249, argues whether the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act “require children with disabilities to satisfy a uniquely stringent ‘bad faith or gross misjudgment’ standard when seeking relief for discrimination relating to their education,” according to the petition for a writ certiorari filed on behalf of the petitioner, a teenage girl who suffers from severe epilepsy.
The petitioner had received an accommodated school schedule when she was a student in Kentucky due to suffering from seizures primarily in the mornings. Upon moving to Minnesota in 2015, the Osseo school district did not accommodate the existing schedule Ava had at her previous school district. The lack of accommodations cut her schooling by more than a third to at times more than half, of her peers over the years.
The US District Court for the District of Minnesota had granted the Osseo Area Schools’ motion for summary judgment, and the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit refused to rehear the case, finding the “bad faith” standard was proper.
The petitioner appealed to the US Supreme Court and is asking the court to decide if “the plain terms of key statutes protecting vulnerable children from discrimination by their schools” should be enforced under the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act.
The arguments on Monday were at times contentious, especially between counsels for the Minnesota school district and the US Supreme Court Justices, who clashed over the respondents’ defense shifting its argument and accusing the petitioner’s counsel of lying, which prompted a firm rebuke by Justice Neil Gorsuch.
Roman Martinez, the attorney representing the petitioner, argued to the court that the school district’s take on the issue would “revolutionize disability law, stripping protections from vulnerable victims and gutting the reasonable accommodations needed for equal opportunity.”
Lisa S. Blatt, attorney for the school district, argued that a finding for the petitioner “would expose 46,000 public schools to liability” when they have relied on the “bad faith” standard.
The court is expected to decide on the case before the end of June.
