Court rules on special education

Justices reject Gorsuch opinion

WASHINGTON - A unanimous Supreme Court strengthened the rights of nearly 7 million schoolchildren with disabilities Wednesday, and did so by rejecting a lower standard set by Judge Neil Gorsuch.

The ruling, one of the most important of this term, came as President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee was wrapping up his third day of testimony before a Senate committee.

Justices ruled for the parents of Endrew F., a Colorado boy with autism who pulled their son from the public school after his progress “essentially stalled.”

They enrolled him in a private academy that specialized in autism, where his behavior and learning improved markedly. They then sued the school district for reimbursement, alleging a violation of the federal law that promises a “free appropriate public education” to children with disabilities.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the school district had not met its duty under the law. Children like Endrew F. have a right to an “educational program that is reasonably calculated to enable (them) to make progress,” he said. And the learning program “must be appropriately ambitious in light of” the child’s capabilities.

This stand “is markedly more demanding than the ‘merely more than de minimus’ test applied by the 10th Circuit,’ ” he said, including in a 2008 opinion written by Gorsuch.