The Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a lawsuit against Georgia over allegations the state is unnecessarily segregating students with disabilities. The department notified the state it was violating the ADA in an extensive findings letter issued back in July of 2015.
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The state is “depriving students in GNETS of the opportunity to benefit from the stimulation and range of interactions that occur in general education schools, including opportunities to learn with, observe, and be influenced by their non-disabled peers”, the lawsuit says. Instead, the department is focusing on the state’s alleged failure to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, a tool legal experts say is much more powerful.
The 4,600 students now in the segregated program could do well in a general classroom setting, the lawsuit says, but Georgia doesn’t provide the mental health and therapeutic services that would make that possible.
In its lawsuit against the state, the Justice Department said that for the vast majority of students, such segregation is unnecessary and thus is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The U.S. Department of Justice is suing the state of Georgia claiming the state violated the civil rights of disabled students.
Georgia schools assign 4,000 to 5,000 students to GNETS each year, including about 125 children in kindergarten or pre-kindergarten.
The state may not necessarily be required to close all GNETS programs.
But segregating students with behavioral disabilities can stigmatize them and keep them from learning to interact with others. It found that most disabled students spend all of their school day completely separated from the rest of the student body, sometimes in the basement of a school or in a separate wing or building.
The lawsuit did not address racial disparities in GNETS enrollment, first reported last spring in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Requests for comment from the offices of Attorney General Olens and Georgia School Superintendent Richard Woods were not answered in time for publication.
“That goes to show how young students are who are being funneled into segregated settings”, Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said in an interview. One goal of the lawsuit, she said, is to “make sure students with these disabilities have options”.
The Georgia Coalition for Education said it hopes the case “will be the Brown v. Board of Education for Georgia’s students with disabilities”. Students are referred by their local school system.
Georgia officials have indicated they intend to “continue to fund, operate, and administer a separate, segregated, and unequal statewide service system for students in need of mental health and therapeutic educational services”, according to the letter sent to Gov. “We are disappointed that the State has opted to defend the GNETS rather than work towards the full integration of students with disabilities”.
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“This complaint alleges that many children in the GNETS Program are consigned to dilapidated buildings that were formerly used for black children during segregation, or to classrooms that are locked apart from mainstream classrooms, with substantially fewer opportunities of participating in extracurricular activities like music, art and sports”, said a statement from U.S. Attorney John A. Horn of the Northern District of Georgia.
