On June 12, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in A.J.T. v. Osseo, a case that examined whether claims by students arguing disability discrimination by school districts under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) and Rehabilitation Act of 1973 require a showing of “bad faith or gross misjudgment.” The court was unanimous in finding that this standard is incorrect and determined courts should rely on a lower standard that applies to other claims of discrimination.
The case involves a student, A.J.T., who has a rare form of epilepsy. Her cognitive and physical functioning are severely impaired by her epilepsy, and she suffers from seizures throughout the day. Mornings are particularly difficult for A.J.T., with seizures happening most frequently at that time and, as a result, she cannot attend school before noon. Consequently, she requested an accommodation to receive her school instruction between the hours of 12 and 6 p.m. to allow for a full day of learning. Initially, her school district agreed; however, when A.J.T. and her family moved to Minnesota, her new school district, Osseo Area Public Schools (the district), did not agree to provide the same accommodation. Eventually, A.J.T.’s instruction time was further reduced, and her parents filed a complaint under the Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) with the Minnesota Department of Education arguing that A.J.T. was being denied a free appropriate public education as the law required. After an evidentiary hearing, an administrative law judge awarded A.J.T. additional hours of instruction, including home instruction at the times she requested. This decision was affirmed after appeal and judicial review.
Following the IDEA complaint, A.J.T. sued the district (including the school board) under the ADA and Rehabilitation Act claiming discrimination based on her disability. A.J.T. specifically relied on Title II of the ADA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, both of which “prohibit discrimination on the basis of disability in a wide variety of contexts.” The lower court granted the district’s motion for summary judgment and the Eighth Circuit affirmed because A.J.T. did not meet the required standard of showing that school officials acted with “bad faith or gross misjudgment.” Under this unique Eighth Circuit precedent, when “alleged ADA and Section 504 violations are ‘based on educational services for disabled children,’ a school district’s simple failure to provide a reasonable accommodation is not enough to trigger liability.” (96 F. 4th 1058, 1061 (2024).) Students were required to show “bad faith or gross misjudgment” to prove discriminatory intent, which is a heightened standard. The Supreme Court’s ruling eliminated this heightened standard and aligned showing discriminatory intent toward a disabled student in an education setting with other claims of discrimination under these laws by requiring a showing of “deliberate indifference.” This is a lower, easier to meet standard.
The Court provided a timeline and background of how the differences in required standards came to be, summarizing the cases of Monahan v. Nebraska (687 F. 2d 1164 (8th Cir. 1982)), which created the unique standard for claims by students with disabilities in an education setting, and Smith v. Robinson (486 U.S. 992 (1984), which held that the IDEA was the only basis on which a child with a disability could challenge the adequacy of their education. The Smith case explicitly limited the ability of students to bring discrimination claims outside of the IDEA and the Monahan case created an “implicit limit” within the IDEA. The Court held that both limitations from these cases are impermissible based on a new section of the IDEA added after the Smith case, which states that no part of the IDEA “restrict[s] or limit[s] the rights, procedures, and remedies available under the Constitution, the [ADA], title V of the Rehabilitation Act [including section 504] or other Federal laws protecting the rights of children with disabilities.”
Under this decision, students with disabilities have a right to bring claims of disability discrimination under any law without limitation and are not subject to any heightened standard to show discrimination, which affords students and parents greater opportunities to seek recovery when they feel discrimination based on disability has occurred.
