Supreme Court decision makes it easier for disabled students to sue school districts for bias

The justices sided with the teenage girl whose attorneys said a Minnesota school district failed to accommodate her disability needs

News Release from HSTA, June 13, 2025

A teenage girl with a rare form of epilepsy won a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Thursday that’s expected to make it easier for families of children with disabilities to sue schools over access to education, the Associated Press reported.

The girl’s family says that her Minnesota school district didn’t do enough to make sure she has the disability accommodations she needs to learn, including failing to provide adequate instruction in the evening when her seizures are less frequent, the AP said.

But lower courts ruled against the family’s claim for damages, despite finding the school had fallen short. That’s because courts in that part of the country required plaintiffs to show schools used “bad faith or gross misjudgment,” a higher legal standard than most disability discrimination claims.

The district, Osseo Area Schools, said that lowering the legal standard could expose the country’s understaffed public schools to more lawsuits if their efforts fall short, even if officials are working in good faith.

The family appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled that lawsuits against schools should be subject to the same requirements as other disability discrimination claims.

Children with disabilities and their parents “face daunting challenges on a daily basis. We hold today that those challenges do not include having to satisfy a more stringent standard of proof than other plaintiffs,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.

The court rebuffed the district’s argument, made late in the appeals process, that all claims over accommodations for people with disabilities should be held to the same higher standard — a potentially major switch that would have been a “five-alarm fire” for the disability rights community, the girl’s lawyers said.

The girl’s attorney Roman Martinez, of the law firm Latham & Watkins, called Thursday’s ruling a win for the family and “children with disabilities facing discrimination in schools across the country.” He added that “it will help protect the reasonable accommodations needed to ensure equal opportunity for all.”

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SCOTUSBLOG: Unanimous court rebuffs higher standard for discrimination claims by children with disabilities - SCOTUSblog

AP: Supreme Court rules for girl with epilepsy in case over access to education | AP News