Disabled kids’ right to learn is affirmed unanimously
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 came as President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee wrapped 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 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 Roberts 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. Under that standard, a school need only show that it had a minimal special program with some level of benefit.
The high court did not mention Gorsuch’s opinion in the earlier case, but it reversed a 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Circuit ruling that had relied on it.
Asked about the issue Wednesday, Gorsuch said he was part of a three-judge panel that had sought to follow a Supreme Court standard set in 1982.