US Supreme Court agrees to take up deaf Michigan man's case against school district

The U.S. Supreme Court has said it would hear arguments brought by a deaf Michigan man who wants to sue his former school district for failing to provide him a suitable teacher who knew sign language for more than a decade and inflating his grades when he could neither read or write.

Miguel Perez, an immigrant who moved to the U.S. with his family as a child and is now in his 20s, has been trying for years to press a claim for compensatory damages under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) against the Sturgis Public School District in southwest Michigan.

But lower courts, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati, have rejected that claim, saying Perez never exhausted the administrative review required first under another federal law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

No date has been set for oral arguments before the Supreme Court.

In court filings, Perez's lawyers said Sturgis' failure to provide him a suitably trained instructor for 12 years — during which time he received grades of As and Bs and was listed on the honor roll — led to a situation where he could neither read nor write and failed to learn basic facts, such as the difference between mammals and reptiles and the meaning of slavery. When the instructor he did have was reassigned much of the day, he was given online instruction, despite the fact he could neither read nor write, lawyers said.

His inability to learn or communicate with others, they said, made him "an academic and social outcast." But because of his grades, he and his family believed he was going to graduate in June 2016. A few months before that, they were told he would only receive a certificate of completion.

"Miguel has had no behavioral problems whatsoever," his lawyers said in their initial court filing. "His inability to learn at Sturgis is attributable solely to Sturgis’s failure to provide the auxiliary aids and services necessary for him to receive instruction in the classroom."

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When Perez and his family first brought their claims in 2017, they filed under IDEA, ADA and other state laws. A hearing officer dismissed the ADA claim as outside his purview. Perez and his family eventually settled the IDEA claims, with the district paying to enroll him in the Michigan School for the Deaf and for other training, sign language instruction and attorney fees. Compensatory damages, however, aren't available under IDEA, so the family brought the ADA claim in federal court the following year.

Now, the argument is whether Perez gave up his right to sue under ADA, which may provide for compensatory damages, when he and his family had settled the IDEA claims, rather than following them through the administrative review process, even though that process wouldn't have provided the additional relief they sought. In August, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar filed a brief in the case, saying the 6th Circuit was mistaken when it found that Perez was required to exhaust the IDEA requirements when it was futile to do so − and that its ruling causes a conflict with rules followed in other appeals courts.

Sturgis' lawyer argued, however, that there is no conflict and that another ruling by the Supreme Court earlier this year, which denied a claim for emotional distress damages under the same section of the federal code that contains the remedies available under the ADA, essentially settles the question in the school district's favor.

"The government," wrote Kenneth Chapie, the Troy lawyer representing Sturgis, in response to Prelogar's brief, "tries to sidestep (that Supreme Court decision) by claiming (Perez) can change his request for damages from emotional distress to lost income based on the phrase 'compensatory damages' in the complaint. But (Perez) told both this court and the 6th Circuit that emotional distress damages were all he sought. And now he says... he wants to amend his complaint. Too late."

Chapie added that even if the ADA allowed for such damages, a point he didn't concede, the IDEA process could have been "particularly valuable" in assessing Perez's earning potential.

Perez's lawyers, a group including those from the National Association of the Deaf and Disability Rights Michigan, argued Chapie and Sturgis were wrongly claiming that Perez only ever sued for emotional distress − the original claim asked only for an unenumerated amount of "compensatory damages" − and that, even if he had, the Supreme Court's decision in the earlier case would allow his claim to be amended.

"As Miguel and the solicitor general have explained, (his) complaint states a claim... because Sturgis’s 12 years of severe neglect caused compensable pecuniary harm by dramatically limiting Miguel’s vocational prospects and earning capacity, and by forcing Miguel to forego years of income during the high school years he had to redo," they said. "At minimum, then, Miguel may seek compensatory damages for lost income."

Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@tsspangler.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: US Supreme Court takes up deaf Michigan student's case against school