A former graduate student has brought suit against George Fox University in Oregon, claiming a violation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act based on the University's alleged failure to accommodate her disabilities and efforts to force her out of her graduate program. The student, who suffered from cognitive impairments due to a traumatic brain injury from a car crash at age sixteen, enrolled in the University's Marriage, Couple, and Family Counseling program but claims that she was never provided certain approved accommodations, including receiving recorded lectures, copies of notes, assistance with note taking, and extra time and privacy for exams. In addition, the following semester the student applied and was accepted for transfer into the University's graduate psychology program. The student claims that the University took actions to force her out of the program because of her disability, including requiring her to take a reading, speech, and writing assessment that was not administered to other students; contacting faculty members to ask about the student's residual memory issues and ability to complete the graduate program; and requiring a Student Progress Review that was not required of other students. Eventually, the program director met with the student and suggested that the program might not work out for her, and that she would likely not be able to graduate. As a result, the student left the University.
The University argued before the Federal District Court in Oregon that the student was not "otherwise qualified" to remain in the program, a requirement for making a claim under Section 504, because the University did not believe that she could successfully complete the capstone requirement of the program: an internship in an actual counseling position. The University explained that while the student was completing her coursework satisfactorily, the University had reservations about her abilities in the live counseling setting where her requested accommodations would not be appropriate or helpful. The court agreed that in the context of a graduate program, "otherwise qualified" means able to complete the program, with or without accommodation, not just succeed in the initial coursework. Nevertheless, the court found that the University's decision to admit the student - with knowledge of her disabilities and a stated willingness to accommodate her - was "powerful evidence" that the University believed she could complete the program and was therefore sufficiently qualified.
The court also held that while the student chose to leave the program and was never actually dismissed, the employment-related concept of "constructive discharge" could also be applied here: the court found that a jury could conclude that the University's treatment of the student was so intolerable that she was effectively forced out of the program due to her disability. Such a finding would allow the student to recover damages as if she had been formally dismissed from the program. The case will now proceed to a jury trial on the student's Section 504 claim.
Client Tip: This case provides two insights for Universities. First, to the best of its abilities, the University's determinations about a student's qualifications to fully complete a program should be made at the application stage, not during the program. Second, even where a student chooses to leave a program, the University can still be exposed to a claim that the student was "constructively discharged" for discriminatory reasons.
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