A unanimous Court on June 12 made it easier for families to use the Americans with Disabilities Act to sue schools for damages, ruling a lower court used too tough a standard to dismiss a lawsuit from a student with a rare form of epilepsy.
Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said the student’s family did not have to show the school acted in “bad faith or gross misjudgment." That’s more difficult to prove than the “deliberate indifference” standard courts often use when weighing other types of disability discrimination claims.
The court also rejected an argument from the school that would have raised the bar for all victims of disability discrimination rather than lowered it for educational instruction claims.