At 10:00 on June 12, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision, in AJ.T. v. Osseo Area Schools. The decision, which was written by  Chief Justice John Roberts, sided with a student with a disability suing the Osseo public schools for not doing enough to accommodate her rare form of epilepsy. This ruling could make it easier for families under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.

The case involved the student in the case, A.J.T., who had a rare form of epilepsy called Lennox-Gestaut Syndrome. Her seizures were so frequent in the mornings that she could not attend school before noon. After noon, however, she was alert and could attend to instruction.

A.J.T. had previously attended a school district in Tennessee that changed her school day so she started in the afternoon and ended the day with evening instruction at home. However, the school district to which her family moved, the Osseo Are Schools in Minnesota, refused to provide this accommodation. Because of this, A.J.T only received a little over 4 hours of instruction per day. A.J.T filed a complaint to the Minnesota Department of Education, alleging that the school district’s refusal to provide her with after hours instruction denied her a free appropriate public education (FAPE). The case was appealed to the federal court, which upheld the ruling against the school district.

A.J.T. and her parents then sued the school district under the ADA and Section 504 seeking a permanent injunction, reimbursement for certain costs, and compensatory damages. The U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota decided in favor of the school district because the school district’s failure did not constitute discrimination, which according to the court required that school officials act in bad faith or use gross misjudgment (in a previous post we noted that in a 1982 decision U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in Monahan v. Nebraska, the appellate court ruled that plaintiffs had to prove that conduct by school officials had to rise to the level of bad faith or gross misjudgment to prove discrimination).

According to the Supreme Court’s ruling, parents of students with disabilities are not required to show that school officials acted with bad faith or used gross misjudgment to prove discrimination. Rather a standard of deliberate indifference, a standard that school officials ignored or disregarded a strong likelihood that the district’s actions may violate federal law. The Court further held that nothing in the ADA or Section 504 requires that educational discrimination claims be based on bad faith or use gross misjudgment.

The previous decision by the appellate court was vacated and remanded.