Lawsuit accuses Catholic schools in New Orleans of discriminating against students with disabilities
NEW ORLEANS — It’s homecoming season, but one 16-year-old is missing the rite of passage this year.
The sophomore, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, is home-schooled — and not by choice.
The teen’s family has sued two local Catholic schools over what it describes as discriminatory admissions practices against students with physical, emotional, or learning disabilities. Now, it has joined a class-action lawsuit that claims that the Archdiocese of New Orleans asks illegal questions about students’ disabilities on its schools’ application forms.
WATCH: Students with disabilities innovate ways to use spaces, products not designed for them
The lawsuit said this kind of practice has denied students with disabilities the opportunity to go to a Catholic school run by the archdiocese.
“We’re very angry at the Catholic Church. We have not been back to church since this happened,” said her mom, who asked that she and her family not be named to protect her daughter’s identity. “The fact that the Catholic schools did this to us and no one from the Church even stepped up to make a comment, tried to help us, or offer any kind of empathy and support — it’s very disheartening.”
It’s hard for her daughter, identified only by the initials E.R. in court documents, to watch social media and listen to her friends talk about everyday school milestones that she won’t experience, her mother said.
“She shouldn’t be judged on what school she can go to, depending upon if she walks on two feet or she rolls in a chair. That has nothing to do with where she should go to school,” she added.
What the lawsuit says
E.R.’s family initially sued two separate schools in 2020 when the then-13-year-old started looking for a high school. The latest class-action lawsuit includes her as well as two other students: an 8-year-old boy with dyslexia and a 16-year-old boy with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
The lawsuit claims that by asking unlawful questions about disabilities and requesting medical information of prospective students before they are enrolled, New Orleans-area Catholic schools are violating the Louisiana Human Rights Act, which does not have a religious exemption, and the Louisiana Civil Rights Act for Persons With Disabilities, which explicitly prohibits asking such questions as a matter of admissions.
The suit also alleges “widespread segregation” of prospective students with disabilities in New Orleans-area Catholic schools, accusing the Archdiocese of New Orleans of directing parents of students with disabilities to apply to a small handful of schools for “exceptional learners,” in violation of both acts.
The lawsuit, originally filed in 2022, was put on hold for close to a year by a judge overseeing the archdiocese’s bankruptcy proceedings, which now includes 500 claims of child sex abuse by priests and other clergy. This year, another judge said the outcome of the bankruptcy process would have no bearing on the discrimination case and allowed the suit to move forward.
A trial date has not been set.
The archdiocese canceled an interview with the PBS NewsHour about its admissions and enrollment and has not returned requests for comment on its practices or on the latest figures for how many students with disabilities or special needs are enrolled at its schools.
On the Archdiocese of New Orleans’ website, data from the 2019-2020 school year indicates that 34,182 students attended Catholic schools in the area. However, it reported that only 205 students — less than 1 percent of total enrollment — attended two schools for students with special needs. The archdiocese did not respond to questions about where students with disabilities are enrolled in their education system. On its website, the archdiocese said there are 74 elementary and high schools.
By comparison, the U.S. Department of Education reported that 12.4 percent of Louisiana school-aged students received special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) in 2021, as did 14.3 percent of students nationally.
“The Archdiocese of New Orleans supports and encourages the ministry of Catholic education. We have and always will welcome and encourage children with disabilities to apply to our high schools and parish elementary schools,” according to the statement. “The thousands of children with disabilities that thrive in our programs are a testament to that fact. The Archdiocese of New Orleans encourages and supports the efforts of Catholic schools to find the resources to implement or expand their ability to provide adjustments in the learning environment for children with exceptional learning needs,” spokesperson Sarah McDonald said in a statement to the NewsHour.
Christopher Edmunds, a disability rights attorney who filed the latest case on behalf of the families, said “there is no non-discriminatory reason why the school needs to know this information before making an offer of admission.”
Schools need to know information that will help them prepare for accommodations before a child begins — for instance if a child with ADHD needs extra time or a different environment to take tests, he said. Under this process, if a school cannot provide an accommodation — for instance, providing a one-on-one aide at its own expense — admission could be lawfully rescinded, he added.
“They’re just shutting people out at the front door essentially. It is illegal under state law to ask these questions in application forms or at any point in the application process, but they use it as a screening device,” Edmunds said. “A lot of parents see these questions and they’re dissuaded from applying in the first place because they’re uncomfortable disclosing the information or they just know that it’s going to be used against them.”
The lawsuit does not seek monetary damages but is asking the court to order the church to remove the questions, change policy, and provide staff with anti-discrimination training. It also asks for legal fees and for the archdiocese to post a public notice that students of all abilities are welcome to attend Catholic schools.
‘A lot of tears shed’
In the New Orleans area, family tradition plays a large role in high school experiences, especially for those attending Catholic schools.
Louisiana has one of the highest rates of private school enrollment in the nation, in part because of the local Catholic culture. More than 518,000 of the 1.2 million people in the New Orleans area identify as Catholic, according to the archdiocese. Twenty-five percent of New Orleans-area students attend private school, more than twice the national average, according to the Cowen Institute at Tulane University, which studies the city’s public education system.
The girl’s mother hoped her daughter would carry on a family tradition of attending the same school. Instead, she said her daughter was blatantly discriminated against and the family received backlash after filing the lawsuits.
“There are a lot of tears shed and friends were lost over this. We’re now at home school. We didn’t just lose friends. We lost the high school experience, and we lost our church community. It was absolutely horrible,” E.R.’s mom, a lifelong Catholic, said. “There were still a lot of repercussions for what we did. I have had nasty things said about me. Hell yeah, it was hard, but I would do it again in a heartbeat.”
Does federal funding make a difference?
Edmunds and families of students with disabilities believe it’s time to hold the Catholic Church accountable, especially if they are accepting state dollars.
Under Louisiana’s Civil Rights Act for Persons with Disabilities, educational institutions that receive state money are prohibited from using an application for admissions that “elicits or attempts to elicit information … concerning the disability of an otherwise qualified applicant for discriminatory purposes,” according to the lawsuit.
Records from the Louisiana Department of Education show the archdiocese and other local Catholic schools received at least $8 million from the state for the 2019-20 school year, according to WWL-TV. The funding was used, in part, for textbooks, school lunches and required services.
“They’ve designated certain schools as schools for kids with learning disabilities, and that’s just not legal. Every school needs to accommodate kids with disabilities. I’ve had instances where schools refuse to accept kids with epilepsy or diabetes,” Edmunds said, referring to complaints he’s received from parents. “One plaintiff in this lawsuit went to just about every Catholic school in the area for her child who has dyslexia and they all turned her down and said, ‘No, we can’t accept a child with dyslexia. We don’t have any way to accommodate dyslexia.'”
The suit cites specific questions and schools asking “unlawful questions about disabilities in their applications for admission,” including a request to list “any physical limitations” or “learning disabilities,” and asking if a child has “a vision, hearing, speech or developmental delay, among others.”
The earlier lawsuits E.R.’s family filed also raised questions about local Catholic schools’ use of federal dollars.
Religious organizations often have an exemption to anti-discrimination laws, but since both schools, Mount Carmel Academy and Cabrini High School, accepted federal pandemic funds under the Paycheck Protection Program, Edmunds believed they violated both the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and had to abide by federal anti-discrimination laws. This meant religious schools that took federal pandemic dollars were subject to federal anti-discrimination suits, he said.
Cabrini accepted between $350,000 and $1,000,000 and Mount Carmel received between $1,000,000 and $2,000,000, according to the lawsuit. Guidance from the Small Business Administration, which administered the Payroll Protection Program, said that applicants for PPP loans must agree to “not discriminate in any business practice,” including employment practices and services to the public on the basis of “age, race, color, religion, sex, handicap, or national origin.”
In the Mount Carmel case, where the girl’s mother is an alumna, administrators left a voicemail saying, “I do want to tell you that we do not have the capabilities of accepting your child. She is just precious–perhaps one day I will meet her,” according to the complaint. “However, we don’t have the accommodations, and I do think our academic program would be substantially difficult for her.”
In court documents, Edmunds argued that Cabrini refused to make a “reasonable accommodation” for the girl. The complaint said a Cabrini administrator initially told the family that the girl would not be allowed to bring an aide to school, which she requires because she was not independently able to use the bathroom. She was allowed to use the aide, paid for by her parents, at a previous school.
Mount Carmel’s website states the school does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, national or ethnic origin. There’s no mention of disability.
Both lawsuits, which sought compensatory damages, were settled out of court before trial.
Edmunds said the overt discrimination is significant for families because it can also involve retaliation in the broader church community as they fight to continue the legacy of a Catholic high school education in their families. Many are now visiting open houses as the lawsuit awaits trial.
“The Archdiocese and Catholic schools operate sort of like a cabal. There’s this culture of retaliation where if you try to challenge us in any way, well, we’re going to blackball you from the community — your kid, your other children, and your cousins, none are gonna get into this school or that school,” said Edmunds, whose own family has a long tradition of attending the same Catholic high school, including brothers, cousins, uncles, nephews and his grandfather. “I get calls all the time from parents who are furious with the way that they’ve been treated, but they are terrified of actually doing anything because of the retaliation that they think that they’re going to from the church.”
Shortly after the class-action suit was filed, Edmunds said the archdiocese tried to stop the lawsuit by claiming it removed questions from school applications. Edmunds believes the schools are still seeking that information verbally or by other means.
The archdiocese did not return requests for comment on its admissions or enrollment practices.
E.R. and her family will miss out on many high school activities because she’s being homeschooled, but they have learned a valuable lesson on the importance of making sure kids with disabilities do not face more scrutiny than kids without them.
“Not only did it bother me about what they were doing to my kid, but how many other kids were they doing that to? It’s been going on for years and years. Nobody did anything about it,” she said. “No matter how hard it is. If you don’t stand up for your child, nobody else will. That’s the bottom line. Standing up for your disabled child is not an easy thing, but you have to do it. You may lose things but you’re also going to gain things.”
No comments:
Post a Comment