Disability Law United, together with the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, Legal Services of Northern California, and King & Spalding, filed a lawsuit against the State of California, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, the California State Board of Education, and the California Department of Education, on behalf of Olivia R. and other students with disabilities in the Del Norte Unified School District. The suit argues that the State has a constitutional and federal obligation to intervene when a local school district cannot provide students with disabilities the education the law requires, and it asks the court to order the State to step in.
Del Norte Unified, a remote district on California’s north coast, has for years been unable to provide basic special education services because of staffing shortages, unqualified contract aides, and mismanagement of third-party service contracts. Declarations from more than a dozen parents describe students denied the one-on-one or two-on-one aides required by their Individualized Education Plans, unqualified aides or substitute teachers assigned to special education classrooms, parents told to keep their children home because no aide was available, developmental regression, and an increased use of physical restraints. The district’s chronic absenteeism rate for students with disabilities is 46 percent, nearly double the statewide average of 24.9 percent. Native American students make up 15.2 percent of the district’s students with disabilities, more than twenty times the statewide average.
The complaint draws on Butt v. State of California, in which the California Supreme Court held that the State’s constitutional duty to provide equal educational opportunity requires it to intervene, including through receivership, when a local district’s program falls fundamentally below statewide standards. It argues that same principle extends to the systemic denial of required special education services, and that the State, as a recipient of federal IDEA and ESEA funding, is independently obligated to ensure students with disabilities receive a free appropriate public education.
The lawsuit seeks an order compelling the State to take direct action, potentially including placing Del Norte Unified into receivership, to ensure special education and Section 504-eligible students receive the services they are owed; a declaration that the State has an obligation to intervene where a district is pervasively denying students a free appropriate public education; and a writ of mandate directing the State to comply with its obligations.
A separate settlement agreement was reached with the school district. The Superior Court granted a demurrer to the complaint against the State. Plaintiffs appealed and that matter has been fully briefed and is pending before California’s First District Court of Appeals
Superior Court of Del Norte County in Crescent City, California.