Investigation of a School System’s Failure to Integrate Disabled Children into Classrooms and Programs
The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, Disability Rights New York, Disability Rights Advocates, and Drinker Biddle under the auspices of the Foundation's High Impact Project investigated a school system that fails to integrate school children into normal school classes and programs.
A class action lawsuit challenging New York City’s segregated school system for students with disabilities on Staten Island was filed on January 26, 2021. The lawsuit alleges that Staten Island’s separate school district for children with disabilities, known as District 75, denies these students an equal education, forcing them into segregated schools and classrooms without adequate resources and with no meaningful opportunity to be integrated into their community schools.
The Defendants, New York City and the New York City Department of Education (DOE) moved to dismiss the case on August 7, 2021, claiming that Plaintiffs’ Complaint relates only to alleged deficiencies in special education services for the Named Plaintiffs, thereby requiring exhaustion of their claims through the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act’s (IDEA) administrative “due process” procedures.
Plaintiffs opposed the motion claiming that their claims center on the unjustified segregation of a putative class of Staten Island District 75 students with disabilities due to Defendants’ failure to provide appropriate and legally required services and supports in the DOE’s community schools. Plaintiffs argued that exhaustion is excused as futile here because the IDEA’s administrative process cannot provide the systemic relief Plaintiffs seek on behalf of the putative class and that their other statutory claims are premised on the “integration mandate” in the Americans With Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and the New York City Human Rights Law and not the provision of a free appropriate public education (FAPE) contained in the IDEA.
The Plaintiffs point to the Supreme Court’s decision in Fry v. Napoleon Community Schools which held that exhaustion of the IDEA’s administrative remedies is unnecessary for claims not centered on the IDEA’s “core guarantee” of FAPE. The Plaintiffs assert that they are seeking the adoption and implementation of legally required “practices, policies, and procedures [that will] ensure that all students in the Plaintiff Class have the opportunity to be educated in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs.”
In September 2022, the District Court granted the motion to dismiss, concluding the exhaustion requirements of the IDEA applied. See, 20 U.S.C. § 1415(l). Citing Fry v. Napoleon Cmty. Sch. (580 U.S. 154 [2017]), the Court determined the gravamen of Plaintiffs’ case was a denial of a free appropriate public education (FAPE) which could and should be resolved under the IDEA. The Court discounted Plaintiffs’ claims focused on Defendants’ operation of a segregated school system which precludes students with more complex disabilities from education in the most integrated setting in violation of the ADA, Section 504, and the IDEA. Plaintiffs are presently exploring strategies to challenge Defendants’ discriminatory practices.