A comprehensive search of the Westlaw case database for the period January 1, 2008 to August 31, 2018 identified 22 court decisions that contained federal civil rights claim rulings specific to the actions of school resource officers in response to the conduct of students with disabilities. Both the quantitative and qualitative results revealed…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) continues to account for an expansive and expensive segment of education litigation. The most longstanding remedy under the IDEA is tuition reimbursement, interpreted broadly to include not only private school tuition, but also related transportation and stand-alone related services. Probably…

This brief article addresses the question of whether the Individuals with Disabilities Act or Section 504 and its sister statute, the Americans with Disabilities Act, provides for the liability of special educators and other public school personnel for money damages. The analysis synthesizes the applicable case law under these federal disability…

For this 17th article in the series reviewing recent court decisions concerning appropriate school psychology practice from both professional and legal perspectives, the topic is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act's (IDEA) central obligation, free appropriate public education (FAPE). More specifically, the focus here is procedural and…

This article provides an up-to-date and comprehensive canvassing of the judicial case law concerning the responses to students with concussions in the public school context. The two categories of court decisions are (a) those concerning continued participation in interscholastic athletics, referred to under the rubric of "return to play"…

This article provides a multipart analysis of the public schools' responsibility for students with concussions. The first part provides the prevailing diagnostic definitions of concussions and postconcussive syndrome. The second and central part provides (a) the legal framework of the two overlapping federal laws--the Individuals with Disabilities…

This article provides a tabular analysis of court rulings where public school principals challenged the adverse employment actions of involuntary transfer, suspension, demotion, nonrenewal, constructive termination, and termination during the period 1998-2012. The primary findings were that (a) the judicial outcomes were markedly in favor of the…

The article provides a concise and up-to-date synthesis of the published case law where a student teacher was the plaintiff, or suing party, and the defendant was an institution of higher education and/or the cooperating local school district. There were 28 of these court decisions, and the outcomes favored the defendant institutions in 23 of them…

The primary purpose of this study is to determine a preliminary national percentage of students who are "504-only." The survey data reveal that 504-only students represent 1.2% of the public school population. There is a significant difference in the 504-only percentage with regard to school level, with middle and high schools having a…

Public schools have certain responsibilities for the health of their students. Approximately half of the states require schools to implement health standards, including physical exams, as a prerequisite to attendance. All 50 states require public school students to be vaccinated against diseases such as diphtheria, measles, and rubella. And,…

An annotated outline provides recent case law in special education since the last update in this series. (MLF)

The definition of "disability" under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act is broader than that under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. For those students who are eligible only under the broader coverage of Section 504, the question arises of the applicable substantive standard for free appropriate public education (FAPE).…

An annotated outline of reported court decisions on special education issues are grouped in the following operational sequence: (1) diagnosis and placement; (2) treatment issues; (3) financial issues; and (4) gifted students. (MLF)

An annotated outline provides recent case law in special education. (MLF)

In the April 1999 issue of this journal, Michael Ferraraccio argues that the justifications advanced for using metal detectors in schools are not sufficiently compelling to outweigh students' Fourth Amendment privacy rights. In the accompanying Counterpoint, Robert Johnson cites lower court cases to support the constitutionality of their used on a…