The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider whether an epileptic student’s family may sue her Minnesota school district over special accommodations that she was denied.
The student, known as A.J.T. and by her first name, Ava, is suing through her parents, who are identified in court papers as A.T. and G.T.
The petition, filed in September 2024, states that Ava suffers from Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome, a rare kind of epilepsy. She has intellectual limitations and experiences seizures during the day. The most severe seizures happen in the morning, but after that “she’s alert and able to learn until about 6:00 p.m.” She also needs assistance with walking and toileting.
The Supreme Court will take a look at whether Ava’s family had to demonstrate that the school district acted with “bad faith or gross misjudgment” during the dispute over the special accommodations.
The family argues that the school district applied a stricter test to the circumstances than was required.
“The question presented comes up frequently in litigation brought by children with disabilities,” the petition reads. “It should now be resolved by this Court.”
The family filed suit under several federal statutes, including the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which guarantees that all children receive a “free appropriate public education.” The family also alleged violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which states that “no qualified individual with a disability shall, by reason of such disability, be excluded from participation in or be denied the benefits of the services, programs, or activities of a public entity, or be subjected to discrimination by any such entity.” The Rehabilitation Act has a similarly worded provision regarding the rights of recipients of federal funding, according to the petition.
Before Ava’s family moved to Minnesota in 2015, her public school district in Kentucky met her needs, including home instruction late in the day.
Her new school district in Minnesota, Osseo Area Schools, “refused to accommodate her,” denying evening instruction and giving “a series of shifting explanations.” In the beginning, the district stated that it did not want to set a bad precedent and then later stated that educating at home “would be too restrictive” while at the same time saying it needed more “data” to rationalize a “programming change.”
In the first three years of living in Minnesota, Ava took in just 4.25 hours of daily instruction, which was two fewer hours than non-disabled students received. In 2018, the district reduced her daily instruction to three hours. Her parents negotiated with the district in hopes of her receiving 4.25 hours per day but the district said no, according to the petition.
Ava’s parents then launched an IDEA complaint with the Minnesota Department of Education. An administrative law judge held that the district ran afoul of the IDEA. The judge ruled that instead of prioritizing the child’s educational needs, the district was more concerned with maintaining “the regular hours of the school’s faculty.”
The judge directed the district to provide evening instruction.
The school district appealed to the federal district court. At about the same time, Ava’s parents filed suit against the district under the ADA and Rehabilitation Act, asking for an injunction to “permanently secure [Ava]’s rights to a full school day,” along with compensatory damages for the mistreatment she experienced, according to the petition.
The federal district court affirmed the ruling favoring Ava under the IDEA, finding that she needed “more than 4.25 hours of schooling a day.” The court found that “extending her instructions day until 6:00 p.m. and including compensatory hours of instruction” was “the appropriate remedy” under the IDEA.
However, the court ruled against Ava with regard to the ADA and Rehabilitation Act claims, reasoning that she had failed to demonstrate that the district acted either with “bad faith or gross misjudgment.”
A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed. In June 2024, the full circuit court denied a request for a rehearing.
Ava’s family argued in the petition that the Eighth Circuit erred in “imposing a uniquely stringent standard on children with disabilities bringing education-related claims.”
The family said the Supreme Court should grant the petition because the circuit court “incorrectly resolved an important question of federal law.” The standard embraced by the circuit court “lets school districts off the hook even when, as here, their behavior evinces deliberate indifference to students’ federally protected rights.”
The school district urged the Supreme Court to not take the case.
“Although petitioner’s parents disagree with some decisions the District made, those disagreements do not evince discriminatory intent under any standard used in any circuit [court],” the brief reads.
The Supreme Court should leave the Eighth Circuit decision in place because, as the high court has previously ruled, the courts should not substitute “their own notions of sound educational policy for those of the school authorities,” according to the brief.
Attorney Selene Almazan, legal director of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, told The Epoch Times that the group is “encouraged that the Court has agreed to review the standard.”
The organization filed a brief in the case in October 2024.
“The ‘bad faith or gross misjudgment’ standard is not required by the actual statutory texts of the ADA or Section 504 [of the Rehabilitation Act], and neither the Eighth Circuit nor other circuit courts of appeals require such a showing for disability discrimination cases that arise in non-school settings,” Almazan said.
The Epoch Times reached out for comment to the family’s attorney, Roman Martinez of Latham and Watkins in Washington, and the attorneys for the school system, Lisa Blatt of Williams and Connolly in Washington and Christian Shafer of Ratwik, Roszak, and Maloney, in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
No replies were received by publication time.
