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Imagine that you are a parent of a student who is about to graduate from high school. You feel a sense of relief and pride because you know that earning a high school diploma will open doors for your child’s future.

Then, you receive a call from your child’s school notifying you for the first time that, instead of a diploma, your child is only eligible for a certificate of completion. You are in shock because your child was on the Honor Roll every semester, and you assumed they were on track to graduate. When you dig a little deeper, you discover that, despite the good grades on paper, your child lacked the required skills necessary to graduate, and that the school’s aides were not trained to work with children who are deaf and did not even know sign language. Clearly, if this were your child, you would feel betrayed and upset.

These are the facts that led to Perez v. Sturgis Public Schools (2023). Miguel Luna Perez’s family alleged that the school district violated both the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). They resolved the IDEA claim through a settlement after asserting that the district failed to provide an Individualized Education Program (IEP) “reasonably calculated to enable” Miguel to make appropriate progress, consistent with Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District (2017). Miguel was awarded compensatory education which included specialized schooling at a state school for the deaf, plus postsecondary instruction in sign language for himself and his family.

Compensatory education is a common form of IDEA relief. It is designed to remedy educational services that the school should have provided but did not. Depending on the student’s needs, compensatory relief can take many forms, including summer school, after-school programming, and tutoring. It can also be provided after a student has “aged out” (i.e., no longer eligible under IDEA), to make up for past lack of educational supports.

Separately, Miguel’s ADA disability discrimination claim continued and ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court decided that when students and families seek a remedy that IDEA does not provide, such as monetary damages, they are not required to exhaust IDEA’s administrative processes before filing a suit under the ADA. In other words, Miguel and his family were permitted to continue their ADA lawsuit seeking monetary damages without having to go through the administrative steps like a resolution session, mediation, and due process hearing.

Legal Challenges After Graduation

School leaders should be increasingly concerned about students with disabilities nearing graduation who, like Miguel, are surprised to learn that they are not eligible for a diploma due to failures to provide them with an adequate education. It is critical that school leaders recognize that some students file lawsuits after they graduate.

Aleysha Ortiz is a college student who claimed that her high school failed to adequately address her learning disabilities. Despite graduating with honors and earning a scholarship to college, Aleysha cannot read or write (Clay & Freeman, 2025). Although teachers and a social worker advocated that she needed more support, Aleysha claimed that school leaders ignored these pleas for help (Outcalt, 2025).

So, Aleysha began advocating on her own behalf. It was not until the last day of school that additional evaluations were completed. These evaluations identified that she had a diagnosis of dyslexia and needed explicit teaching in phonics, reading comprehension, and fluency.

Aleysha explained that she was able to get through high school by relying on text-to-speech apps, using her phone to record and relisten to all her classes, and spending five hours on homework every evening (Clay & Freeman, 2025). She filed a lawsuit alleging that her school district and special education case manager neglected her learning disabilities and inflicted emotional distress (Outcalt, 2025). Aleysha’s lawyer has not claimed that special education law was violated but instead, filed a negligence lawsuit seeking monetary damages.

Currently, her attorney has made an offer to settle for $3 million but this suit is pending.

In a similar case, William, a high school graduate with a 3.4 GPA, graduated from high school and sued his school district because he, like Aleysha, was also unable to read. This court case, William v. Clarksville-Montgomery County School System (2025), is detailed in a recent column, “Deciphering Dyslexia Law,” as well as a “Chalk and Gavel” podcast episode, “Inappropriate Goals and Inadequate IEPs.” William’s school had provided services for years, but William’s IEP remained mostly the same, and he was not identified for dyslexia until his junior year. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that the school violated IDEA by not providing a free appropriate public education (FAPE) and awarded William compensatory education involving 888 hours of specialized dyslexia tutoring to help him learn to read.

Recent Federal Changes

Legal challenges involving students nearing graduation are particularly important because of two recent changes in federal law and practice. These changes may result in an increase in expensive, time-consuming litigation for school districts.

First, in A.J.T. v. Osseo Area Schools (2025), the U.S. Supreme Court clarified the legal standard used to determine whether schools have discriminated based on disability. This clarified standard is whether they acted with “deliberate indifference” and not the heightened standard of “bad faith or gross misjudgment.” Many disability rights advocates celebrated this decision because it may make it easier for some families/students to prevail in disability discrimination claims against schools. It could also lead to increased litigation where courts may order more school districts to pay monetary damages to students/families.

Second, a practical change also occurred in 2025. Families and students no longer have the same opportunity to resolve their disability-related complaints through the Office for Civil Rights (OCR). In the past, OCR complaints often resulted in resolution agreements instead of litigation. Essentially, instead of time-intensive and expensive lawsuits, resolution agreements meant that the families’ and students’ concerns were investigated, addressed, and monitored by this federal agency.

However, in 2025, OCR reached only 73 resolution agreements, in comparison to 2024, when OCR resolved 390 complaints (Turner, 2025). Additionally, in 2025, seven of OCR’s 12 regional offices were closed and 299 OCR employees were fired, which means about half of the OCR staff who were handling complaints remain. As administrative remedies face constraints, families and students have fewer options to ensure their right to FAPE are upheld, potentially making lawsuits a more viable path.

Recommendations

Considering the recent legal challenges and the changes in federal law and practice, the years right before students with disabilities finish high school are vitally important. Not only must school leaders ensure eligible students are receiving transition services as required by IDEA, but they also must identify students like Miguel, Aleysha, and William—who are passing from grade-to-grade without obtaining the requisite skills they need. Because this is a sensitive and legally vulnerable time, school leaders should consider the following recommendations.

1. Evaluate and provide professional development to staff to ensure they are carefully monitoring students’ progress in obtaining fundamental skills.

2. Ensure staff are not equating good grades with adequate progress nor merely enabling assignments to be completed. As recommended in Deciphering Dyslexia Law, “Be skeptical of providing too many accommodations, especially voice-to-text and read-aloud software. Remediation cannot be substituted by simply providing accommodations.” In this era of artificial intelligence, educators must assess students’ comprehension and skills without the use of technology.

3. Pay special attention to students like Aleysha and William who have learning disabilities, as well as students with low-incidence disabilities like Miguel who may not be receiving the specialized supports needed to make appropriate progress. If personnel shortages exist, leaders must advocate for increased resources from the district/state and could argue that this support is needed to prevent potential lawsuits. Document and use student data to illustrate how personnel shortages are resulting in failure to provide students with FAPE.

4. Keep families notified of whether students are on track to receive a high school diploma. Prioritizing effective communication and positive relationships is especially important when English is not the first language of the families. Both Aleysha and Miguel’s families stated that there were language barriers and communication challenges with their schools.

Janet R. Decker, JD, PhD, is an associate professor of education law at Indiana University and a co-author of Legal Rights of School Leaders, Teachers, and Students. John Andrésen, PhD, is an assistant research scientist at the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community at Indiana University. Derek Nord, PhD, is director of the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community and professor of special education at Indiana University.

References

A.J.T. v. Osseo Area Schs., 605 U.S. 335 (2025).

Clay, S. & Freeman, D. (2025, February 27). She graduated from high school with honors but can’t read or write. Now she’s suing. CNN. cnn.com/2025/02/27/us/connecticut-aleysha-ortiz-illiterate-lawsuit-cec

Decker, J., Zavodjancik, J. & Zagata, E. (2025, October). Deciphering dyslexia law. Principal Leadership, 47–49. nassp.org/publication/principal-leadership/volume-26-2025-2026/principal-leadership-october-2025/legal-matters-october-2025/

Endrew F. v. Douglas Cnty. Sch. Dist., 580 U.S. 386 (2017).

Outcalt, J. (2025, April 14). UConn student sues Hartford school system after graduating high school illiterate. The Daily Campus. dailycampus.com/2025/04/14/uconn-student-sues-hartford-school-system-after-graduating-high-school-illiterate/

Perez v. Sturgis Pub. Schs., 598 U.S. 142 (2023).

Thomas, C., & Kudlats, J. (Hosts). (2025, April 8). Inappropriate goals and inadequate IEPs (No. 41) [Audio podcast episode]. In Chalk & Gavel. Chalk and Gavel LLC. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/41-inappropriate-goals-and-inadequate-ieps/id1712117845?i=1000702661524

Turner, C. (2025, December 3. 50 years after the birth of special education, some fear for its future under Trump. NPR. npr.org/2025/12/03/nx-s1-5591152/trump-special-education-disabilties-schools

William A. v. Clarksville-Montgomery Cnty. Sch. Sys., 127 F.4th 656 (6th Cir. 2025).