A ruling in favor of Osseo Area Schools, located in suburban Minneapolis, would mean students who claim their rights were violated will have to prove their school systems acted in “bad faith or gross misjudgment” — a higher standard than “deliberate indifference,” which the law requires in other disability discrimination cases. 

An estimated 1.5 million public school students receive disability accommodations under the ADA, ranging from modified academic materials — such as simplifying a text or supplying curriculum via a specialized device — to making classrooms, bathrooms and other school spaces accessible to wheelchair users and others. The law governs accessibility, while disabled children’s educational rights are guaranteed by a different measure, the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act.    

Teenager Ava Tharpe has a severe form of epilepsy that causes frequent seizures during the morning. While planning to move from Kentucky to Minnesota in 2015, when she was in fourth grade, a school district that would agree to start her classes at noon and extend them into the evening. After the family relocated, the district reneged, saying it was unwilling to provide services outside the normal school day. 

When the Supreme Court , the district’s position had consistently been that disability discrimination suits had to prove the school system acted out of ill intent. that the legal standard, which plaintiffs have been held to in some federal court circuits but not others, applied only to K-12 students.

But in the brief it submitted before the April 28 hearing, the district , saying that a showing of bad faith is required in all ADA cases, not just those involving schools. 

“The statutes do not impose liability for nondiscriminatory, good-faith denials of requested accommodations,” the document asserts, adding that the high court “should not subject America’s 100,000 public schools and countless other state and local entities and federal-funding recipients” to the deliberate indifference standard. 

The hearing erupted in verbal fireworks after the district’s attorney accused the lawyers representing the federal government, which has sided with the family, of “lying” in saying that the district had shifted its argument. Justice Neil Gorsuch snapped back, and several minutes of heated debate ensued. 

Later in the hearing, Justice Amy Coney Barrett characterized the district’s shift as “a pretty big sea change,” according to posted by SCOTUS Blog, which also reported Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was “all but incredulous” that the district argued that the ADA does not necessarily require accommodations for people with disabilities. 

Osseo officials declined to comment on the case, citing Tharpe’s right to privacy. “The school district educates nearly 21,000 students, including 3,000 students with disabilities who have the right to education from birth through age 22,” it said in a comment to ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. “We’re committed to the principles and the ideals expressed by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.”

The Tharpe family initially filed a complaint with state education officials under the IDEA, which guarantees disabled pupils a “free and appropriate public education.” Noting that the girl had a right to a full school day, even if it extended into the evening, a state administrative law judge found that Ava’s educational rights had been violated. 

When the district appealed that ruling in federal district court, the family filed a second suit under the ADA. In March 2024, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that the family’s IDEA rights had been violated. But the appellate court rejected the ADA discrimination claim, ruling the Tharpes had not proven the district acted in bad faith.

The Supreme Court’s eventual ruling should not impact IDEA, which governs whether children with disabilities are entitled to special education services enabling them to make adequate progress toward their goals.

By contrast, the ADA requires equal access to school and an equal opportunity to learn once they are there, explains Ellen Saideman, one of the authors of a submitted by the Council of Parent Advocates and Attorneys and several other disability advocacy groups. They argue that a ruling in the district’s favor would unfairly subject schoolchildren to a much higher legal bar than other people who need accommodations. 

To illustrate the difference, she cites a 2004 ADA case, , brought by someone who had to crawl up the stairs to get into a Tennessee courthouse that didn’t have an elevator. Under the “gross misjudgment” standard, there wouldn’t be a claim.

“The building was built before the ADA was passed, so it wasn’t built with any discriminatory intent,” says Saideman. “Under deliberate indifference, they know a person has a disability and there are other people who have disabilities who can’t go up the stairs. If they don’t fix it, then there could be a claim.”

One of the ADA’s original drafters, former Rep. Tony Coelho of California, also submitted a brief that Congress’ intent was that families of disabled children have “the same rights, no more, no less, that are provided all other groups 
 including the right to seek relief under Section 504 [and] the ADA.”

​​A decision is expected in June or July, near the end of the court’s current term.

But in a moment of dĂ©jĂ  vu, 7,339 of those Title IX complaints were filed by a single person — the same one who directed 6,157 similar claims to OCR in 2016, according to the civil rights office, which declined to name the filer, citing privacy rules. That person would have had to file an average of 20 complaints a day — or nearly one an hour — in 2022.

“This individual has been filing complaints for a very long time with OCR and they are sometimes founded,” Catherine Lhamon, the department’s assistant secretary for civil rights, told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. 

She noted anyone can file a complaint for any perceived violation.  

“It doesn’t have to be about their own experience,” Lhamon said. “There’s not a lot I can tell you about the person.”

In , the office received 18,804 complaints, the highest number in its history and a figure that exceeds by 12% its previous record of 16,720 set in . Lhamon has talked on multiple occasions about how is straining its limited resources, with 2022’s being particularly challenging. 

“We investigate every complaint over which we have jurisdiction,” the assistant secretary told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. “So the 7,339 complaints from that single individual last year took a very substantial amount of time for my staff.”

And while Lhamon did note her office has found in the complainant’s favor in the past, she didn’t immediately know how often or if this happened in 2022. 

In 2016, the more than 6,000 complaints filed by that same individual alleged discrimination in school athletic programs, according to the civil rights office. Fiscal year 2022 followed much the same pattern when the office logged 4,387 allegations of Title IX discrimination involving athletics. 

One complaint could include more than one type of alleged Title IX violation, encompassing, for instance, both athletics and gender harassment. 

The 2022 athletics-related claims far outpaced the 1,030 related to sexual or gender harassment or sexual violence. The figure also swamps similar claims from when just 2,093 complaints included Title IX-related claims — with just 101 focused on athletics. More than 500 cases concerned sexual or gender harassment or sexual violence that year. 

Some wonder about the type and validity of complaints filed by one person. 

“When you see that almost 80% of Title IX complaints filed with the Education Department were filed by a single person — and this person filed nearly 8,000 complaints in a year — it raises questions about whether at least some were filed in bad faith,” said Elizabeth Tang, senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center. 

It’s possible too, Tang said, that the uptick can be a response to increased awareness about student’s rights. It might also reflect a perception that the Biden administration is more receptive to these complaints than the prior one which, under the leadership of former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, looked to roll back more stringent investigations of campus sex assault and discriminatory discipline claims.

Liz King, senior program director of education at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said she hopes greater awareness is at work, but is concerned about ongoing and possibly increased civil rights violations against students. 

“Any single instance of discrimination is one instance too many,” she said, adding that the civil rights office does not have the staff to meet the task it’s been given. 

The surge in complaints comes at a time when the agency faces significant challenges: It shrank from nearly 1,100 full-time equivalent staff in FY 1981 to 546 last year and is dealing with a host of issues that reflect by the pandemic.

Biden, in his March budget address, sought — to $178 million — for the civil rights office to meet its goals. Lhamon, whose 2021 confirmation Senate Republicans tried to block, said she’s grateful for the president’s support and hopes Congress approves the increase. 

Race, color, or national origin discrimination claims made up 3,329 of all complaints received in FY 2022, according to the civil rights office’s annual report, which was released last week. That’s up from 2,399 the year prior. Disability-related complaints comprised 6,467 of the total compared to 4,870 in FY 2021.  

At the same time, age discrimination claims, which made up 666 complaints in the most recent report, were down from 1,149 the prior year. The office notes the majority of these claims were also filed by a single person in both years.

The civil rights office fielded 8,934 complaints in FY 2021 and more than 9,700 the year before that, according to its annual reports. 

Lhamon said a number of cases this year involved the LGBTQ and transgender community, a student population that has become the focus of hostile legislation in multiple conservative states. The complaints can cover a wide swath of issues, she said, from the prohibition of same-sex prom kings and queens to a school’s refusal to allow an LGBTQ student group to form on campus. 

“It could be that students are not allowed to use the bathroom consistent with their gender identity or are not allowed to play on a particular sports team,” she added. 

The first resolution agreement crafted by her office on behalf of a transgender student was in 2013: It developed fewer than 20 such agreements for these children in FY 2022, Lhamon said. 

Among the allegations made against schools, the civil rights office found in April 2022 that Chino Valley Unified in California violated Title IX by failing to properly respond to a complaint of sexual harassment of students on a high school athletic team. 

This included the “videotaped assaults of teammates, students forcibly physically overpowering other students and sharing photos of their genitals among the team and on social media, and students placing their genitals on and near other students’ faces and bodies.”

The response from district administrators and coaches failed to end the behavior. According to the office, Chino Valley agreed to reach out to all former athletes from the offending school’s fall 2017 team and offer counseling services or reimbursement for such services.

It also was made to conduct a climate survey of the school’s athletics teams and train district leaders, school administrators and coaches about their responsibilities for responding to such claims. 

In another case, this one involving the San Juan Bautista School of Medicine in Puerto Rico, OCR found the school failed, over the course of several years, to investigate a student’s report that another student sexually assaulted her. 

The office concluded that the school’s procedures for resolving sexual harassment complaints did not comply with Title IX. As a result, it agreed to conduct the investigation, reimburse the complainant for some coursework, train employees and align its grievance procedures with the law. 

In a third case, Tamalpais Union High School District in California was faulted by OCR for failing to investigate allegations that a transgender student was harassed about her appearance, voice, body, name and pronouns. 

The office found in June the district’s inadequate response allowed for a hostile environment for the student. The district agreed to reimburse the student and her family for counseling costs and review its policies and procedures among other measures.

The justices reversed a decision by the Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit that prohibited Miguel Luna Perez from seeking financial relief under the Americans with Disabilities Act because his family accepted a settlement under special education law.

“We clarify that nothing in that provision bars his way,” Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the opinion, referring to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. He added that the court took the case because it has consequences for “a great many children with disabilities and their parents.”

In a statement, Roman Martinez, Luna Perez’s attorney, said the family now plans to pursue a lawsuit against the Detroit-area Sturgis Public Schools under the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

The “court’s ruling vindicates the rights of students with disabilities to obtain full relief when they suffer discrimination,” he said.

The case focused on whether Congress intended for families to relinquish their rights to sue for monetary damages when they agree to a settlement under IDEA to get their children services as quickly as possible. But advocates for school districts, such as AASA, the School Superintendents Association, argued that districts could be facing multiple lawsuits from the same family.

“This is a significant ruling, and an unsurprising decision based on the oral argument,” said Sasha Pudelski, advocacy director for AASA. “We have deep concerns with injecting a legal battle over money into the IDEA process and how this ruling may undermine parents’ willingness to collaborate with districts in crafting an appropriate special education program for a child.”

Luna Perez, whose family emigrated from Mexico, entered the Sturgis schools in 2004, when he was 9. He didn’t know American Sign Language or English. The district assigned him an aide who couldn’t sign, invented hand signals to communicate with him and often left him alone for hours. 

He received good grades, but before graduation in 2016, the district told his parents that he would not be eligible for a high school diploma — only a certificate of completion. The family sued under IDEA, which resulted in a placement in the Michigan School for the Deaf. But the family also argued that their son should be compensated for being left without the skills to get a job. IDEA includes a number of procedural steps before a case can go to court and doesn’t provide financial relief. 

The only remedy available under IDEA is compensatory education services. But Rebecca Spar, a special education attorney with the New Jersey-based Education Law Center, said that’s less important to an adult who needs to support himself.  

“It was the kind of case where appropriate education going forward could not remediate the harm to the student,” she said.

Advocates for English learners said there are lessons in the case for how districts serve immigrant families whose children have disabilities. Schools need to ensure immigrant families understand their rights and provide interpretation and translation services, said Cady Landa, a researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who has the obstacles facing such families.

In the Sturgis schools, things have changed since Luna Perez was a student, said Superintendent Art Ebert, who has been with the district since 2018. The district has an interpreter and is expanding its special education department. Depending on their needs, some students with disabilities attend programs offered by county-level intermediate districts if local schools can’t provide the services.  

“I do believe that every experience provides us with an opportunity to learn and grow,” Ebert said.

Comments and questions from the justices seemed to lean toward yes.

“All she wants is to be compensated for what she says occurred to her during the period of her education,” Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said, offering a hypothetical example of a senior who wants to drop out. “Does she have to sit in front of a hearing officer and talk about ways in which her education could be changed?” 

While the arguments in the case are complex, they come down to whether Congress meant for students to give up their rights under IDEA — which does not provide monetary damages — in order to bring a lawsuit seeking a financial award under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Advocates for students with disabilities argue that was never the intention of the law, while those representing school districts are concerned about the potential for “dual-track litigation” under both IDEA and ADA.

“That could be extremely expensive for districts,” said Sasha Pudelski, advocacy director for AASA, the School Superintendents Association. A ruling in favor of the plaintiff, she added, â€œhas the potential to shift parents’ and districts’ focus to money rather than educational needs.”

The case, , focuses on a deaf immigrant from Mexico, now 27, who entered the Michigan district in 2004, when he was 9. The district assigned Miguel Perez to an aide who didn’t know American Sign Language and invented hand signals to communicate with him. 

“This shameful conduct permanently stunted Miguel’s ability to communicate with the outside world,” said his attorney Roman Martinez. 

The family sued and agreed to a settlement under IDEA that allowed Perez to attend Michigan School for the Deaf. But his parents also sought monetary damages for emotional distress and lost income under ADA.

Shay Dvoretzky, representing the school district, said Congress didn’t want families to do an end run around the administrative process outlined in special education law — such as attending a resolution conference and filing a formal complaint — in order to seek damages.

“Congress carefully crafted those procedures, and it wanted parents and school districts to go through them” in order to ensure the student receives appropriate services, he said.

But Justice Elena Kagan, one of the liberals on the court, said it’s unlikely families would pass up services for a child under IDEA in order to reserve their right to sue.

“It’s the parents that have the greater incentive to get the education fixed for their child,” she said. 

‘Cannot remedy the harm’

Rebecca Spar, an attorney with the New Jersey-based Education Law Center, who has argued special education cases, said a key issue is Perez’s age. His parents brought the case after the district told him he would be eligible only for a certificate of completion, not a diploma.

If a child is denied services at a young age, the educational relief provided through IDEA can make a real difference in the child’s future, she said. But the options for older students are far more limited. 

“When you get older, there are all kinds of complications,” she said. ”Then you cannot remedy the harm.”

Kagan and Dvoretzky also exchanged words over the meaning of relief. Dvoretzky suggested it doesn’t necessarily mean money and that it was sufficient for the district to address Perez’s loss of an appropriate education by getting him into the school for the deaf.

“It’s 
 a situation where you may not get what you ask for, but you get what you need,” he said.

But Kagan said it’s clear what the family is seeking. 

“It’s relief in the normal sense: What did you get? How much money was put on the table?” she said.

If the court rules for Perez, it’s possible districts would include language in any IDEA settlement that parents are giving up their rights to sue under other laws. 

“That would close the door for ADA relief,” Pudelski said.

Martinez said he can’t predict whether the court will allow Perez’s ADA lawsuit to move forward, but the decision has “important implications not only for Miguel, but for parents and students across the country.”

A lower court ruled that Miguel Perez, now an adult, is not entitled to sue for monetary damages for emotional distress or lost income under the American with Disabilities Act because his family settled the case under special education law. 

“The parents were really over a barrel here,” said Mark Weber, a law professor at DePaul University in Chicago who co-wrote to the court on behalf of the plaintiff. “They needed to get services right away for this kid. The kid’s not getting any younger.”

While the case, , delves into the complex procedural rules that govern special education, it speaks to the frustration many families whose children have disabilities feel in systems that often seem stacked against them. Navigating that legal landscape is even trickier for immigrant families, who are “likely unfamiliar with U.S. school systems” and are unused to the “idea of children with disabilities having a right to education,” said Cady Landa, a researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who has the obstacles immigrant families face when seeking special education services. 

Immigrant parents, she said, are often unsure how to talk to school staff and may have “smaller social circles that are less likely to include other parents who have navigated special education for their children.” 

The Perez lawsuit asks whether families can sue for damages under other federal laws that prohibit discrimination even if they haven’t exhausted their rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Act, or IDEA. Perez’s petition argues that there’s a conflict in the lower courts over this issue. 

But lawyers for the Sturgis district disagree. They also note that the Supreme Court ruled last year that the Americans with Disabilities Act for emotional distress and that Perez changed his request to ask for lost income.

“Now he says in his reply that he wants to amend his complaint,” they wrote. “Too late.”

‘Academic and social outcast’

Perez, now 27, entered the Sturgis, Michigan, school district in 2004 as a 9-year-old deaf English learner from Mexico. The district assigned him a classroom aide who didn’t know sign language and even made up hand signals to try to communicate with Perez, according to court documents.

“There was one other deaf student, but we couldn’t communicate with each other,” he said in a statement provided through an interpreter. 

As he got older, the assistant would often leave Perez alone for hours, “rendering him unable to learn or communicate with others and making him an academic and social outcast,” according to his lawyers.

Despite not being able to read or write, Perez received A’s and B’s and made the honor roll every semester. But just weeks before he was set to graduate in 2016, the district told his parents that he would only be eligible for a certificate of completion, not a diploma.

The case, Landa added, points to the need for more translation and interpretation services, specifically for newcomer families whose children have disabilities.

In 2017, the family filed a complaint with the Michigan Department of Education, arguing that the district violated IDEA, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act, as well as two state laws.

In 2018, they settled the IDEA claim. The district agreed to place Perez in the Michigan School for the Deaf, pay for additional services and provide the family with sign language instruction. The district also paid the family’s attorney’s fees.

But that left the remaining complaints under the other laws unresolved, leading the family to file a lawsuit in federal district court, asking for social work services and additional financial relief. 

“I wish I could have gone to college,” Perez said. “I don’t have a job, but I want to have one. I want to make my own choices.”

The 6th Circuit ruled the family wasn’t eligible to sue because their IDEA complaint never went to a hearing.

‘Trying to settle’

The special education complaint process allows parents multiple opportunities to avoid drawn-out legal battles so children can be served as soon as possible. Districts automatically hold and can offer settlements before parents go to court.

“All the way, you’re trying to settle,” said Rebecca Spar, a special education attorney with the New Jersey-based Education Law Center. 

In in support of the school district, administrator organizations — such as AASA, the School Superintendents Association and the National Association of School Nurses — argued that a decision in favor of Perez would “undermine the collaborative nature of the IDEA process, and will shift the parties’ focus to money rather than the student’s education needs.”

Another issue is the cost of litigation, which often discourages families from suing.

“If you decide not to settle with them, they just start running up the legal bills. Our trial was eight days,” said Hayley Grunvald, a San Diego-area parent who is awaiting the outcome of the Perez case. “It’s unaffordable for any parent. I don’t buy Prada bags. I shop at Walmart.”

She filed a complaint against the San Dieguito Union High School District, arguing that officials didn’t evaluate her son Adrian for special education even though they knew he received accommodations and services for ADHD in a prior district.

In December, a judge agreed that the district should have assessed Adrian, but the family lost on other technical points and plans to appeal.

Experts expected the Supreme Court to settle the issues before the court in Perez back in 2017 when they heard . In that case, the Supreme Court found in favor of another Michigan family who sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 when officials wouldn’t allow a service dog to accompany their daughter to school. 

The girl has cerebral palsy and the dog helps her stay balanced while using a walker, opens and closes doors and provides other services that help her be more independent. The family sought monetary damages, saying their daughter experienced “emotional distress and pain, embarrass­ment, [and] mental anguish.”

The appellate court had ruled that the family would have to exhaust the IDEA process before suing under other laws even though it wasn’t a special education case. The Supreme Court disagreed, but left open the question of whether a family still has to seek relief under IDEA given that monetary damages aren’t available under that law.

“Had it clarified everything,” said Weber at DePaul University, “we probably wouldn’t have this case.”