Special education clash: Supreme Court sides unanimously for student with disability

[melm00se]

Source: US Today via Yahoo news

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court sided unanimously Tuesday with a student who is deaf and who sought to sue his school for damages over profound lapses in his education, a case that experts say could give parents of students with disabilities more leverage as they negotiate for the education of their children.

Central to the case was the story of Miguel Perez, who enrolled in the Sturgis Public School District in Michigan at age 9 and brought home As and Bs on report cards for more than a decade. Months before graduation, Perez's parents learned that he would not receive a diploma and that aides the school assigned to him did not know sign language.

Though the legal question raised by the case is technical, its outcome "holds consequences not just for Mr. Perez but for a great many children with disabilities and their parents," Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the unanimous court.

Read more: https://news.yahoo.com/special-education-clash-supreme-court-142142979.html

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This is a dead on direct hit by the Supremes.

It is certainly nice to see that the Supremes can close ranks, sweep aside partisanship and make the right ruling.

[hlthe2b]

1. Great. So now take on those Oklahoma sadists who want to inflict corporal punishment on disabled

kids! Yes, really.

[republianmushroom]

2. I like it

[NullTuples]

3. This is good, and very much needed. But I just don't trust their motives.

Not the Federalist Society justices, anyway.

This ruling only applies to public schools and it will increase their expenses. Hopefully significantly, based on how hard it can be for many families to get accommodations. Too many schools have turned to high efficiency models, where every child is assumed to be identical, thus they can all be treated as a single unit simultaneously. They've had to do this thanks to reduced funding.

I can't help but wonder then, if that calculation went into the conservative justices decision processes. I don't see anything in the ruling about mandating additional funding extra to the current base school budgets. I fear greatly that Republican-controlled states will now boost disabled accommodations - as they should have done all along - but at the expense of the main body of students. Thus making private, religious schools all the more attractive to parents who will vote for voucher programs and the politicians promising them.

[moniss]

4. Exactly and

the schools in GQP land will use any increased funding in weasel ways to line their pockets as opposed to actually producing a positive result for the disabled children. I could easily see the GQP claiming that having disabled kids clean meat processing plants at 2:00 a.m. is a "necessary exposure for real world coping with their disability and chance to apply skills learned in class". Of course it will be minimally compensated labor probably under some new "pilot program exception to the minimum wage requirements".

[mountain grammy]

9. Agree. We should never trust their motives

because, as unfortunate as it is, that's who they are, and the end justifies the means, and they are Leo Leonard's hand picked goons and NOTHING they do is for the greater good...Nothing!

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

5. Good

[SWBTATTReg]

6. Nice and sad too, that the school messed up on this kid's education. Especially at a younger

age, when learning sign language is so important (and lip reading if available).

I was lucky enough to have two schoolteachers that shepherded me through the school system, as well as speech therapists when they realized that when I was 9 years old that they realized that it was my hearing that was the issue, and not being mentally challenged. At which point they immediately got me into speech therapy, got me caught up on schooling (did four years catch up in 1 year in order to get into regular school instead of the special schools I was in).

I hope that regardless of the issues w/ the schooling, that they are able to overcome the prior problems and get the student up to speed. Don't let the finger pointing translate into the child's education, but concentrate on getting them up to speed, get them the tools they need.

[iluvtennis]

7. God stuff - maybe the 6 conservative supremes have a heart after all. n/t

[onenote]

8. Some of the comments read too much into this decision.

The Court addressed a narrow question: the extent to which suits brought by or on behalf of children with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) must exhaust the administrative procedures under that act before bringing a separate action under another anti-discrimination statutes, such as the ADA. In the case before the Court, the plaintiff brought an administrative action under IDEA against the Sturgis School District. That complaint was settled with Sturgis agreeing to provide the forward-looking equitable relief plaintiff had sought, including additional schooling at a school for the deaf.

The plaintiff then brought a separate action under the ADA seeking compensatory damages for the School District's past actions. The district court and the appeals court agreed that the plaintiff's ADA suit should be dismissed because under the IDEA, an action under the ADA cannot be brought for remedies also available under IDEA unless the procedures under IDEA are exhausted. The Court reversed, holding that because IDEA did not provide the same "remedies" as IDEA, the plaintiff's ADA suit could go forward.

However, the Court did not touch the merits of the ADA claim, stating it did not reach the issue of whether the compensatory damages sought by plaintiff were in fact available under the ADA. All the Court did was allow the complaint to move forward instead of being dismissed.