When 'We Didn't Mean It' Stops Being Enough
The Supreme Court just made it harder for schools to hide behind "we didn't mean it" when they violate disabled students' rights.
AJT v. Osseo, decided 9-0, overturned Eighth Circuit precedent that required schoolchildren to prove "bad faith or gross misjudgment" by school officials in disability discrimination cases. The new standard is "deliberate indifference"—the same one that applies to every other ADA and Rehabilitation Act claim (Abilities.com, 2026).
That sounds like legal minutiae. It's not. It's the difference between a school district saying "we made a mistake" and walking away, versus a disabled student actually getting relief.
What "bad faith" really meant
Under the old Eighth Circuit standard, a disabled student had to prove the school didn't just violate their rights—they had to prove the school meant to. That the discrimination was intentional, malicious, or so reckless it crossed into bad faith.
In practice, that's almost impossible to prove. Schools don't put "we're discriminating on purpose" in writing. What they do is fail to provide accommodations, ignore IEP requirements, exclude disabled kids from programs, and then claim it was an oversight. A staffing issue. A miscommunication. Never malice. Always a mistake.
And under "bad faith or gross misjudgment," that was enough. The mistake defense worked, even when the same "mistake" happened repeatedly, to the same student, in the same ways. As long as the school could point to anything—budget constraints, staff turnover, we're working on it—the case died.
The Eighth Circuit's standard didn't protect students. It protected institutions from accountability.
Deliberate indifference is a lower bar, and that's the point
"Deliberate indifference" means the school knew about the need, had the ability to respond, and chose not to. It doesn't require proof of malice. It doesn't let the school off because they claim they didn't realize the harm. It asks: did you know, and did you act?
That's the standard that applies everywhere else in disability discrimination law. Employment cases. Public accommodation cases. Every ADA Title II and Title III claim outside the Eighth Circuit's education carve-out. The Supreme Court didn't invent a new test. They brought schools in line with the standard everyone else already has to meet.
The practical effect: a school can't ignore an IEP, fail to provide mandated services, exclude a disabled kid from activities, and then walk away by saying "we were trying our best." Deliberate indifference asks whether they knew and whether they responded. If they knew and didn't, that's enough.
This is about who answers for it when nobody's watching
The fight was never really "have we passed the right law." The ADA is 36 years old. The Rehabilitation Act is older. Schools have been subject to both for decades. The fight was always "who still has to answer for it when nobody's watching."
Disabled students—especially autistic students, students with intellectual disabilities, students who can't advocate for themselves the way a neurotypical parent can—are the ones who get "mistakes" instead of services. The ones whose IEPs sit in a file while the school year runs out. The ones who get sent home, excluded from field trips, told the accommodation isn't feasible, offered nothing.
And under "bad faith or gross misjudgment," the school could do all of that and defend it as good-faith error.
The Supreme Court's ruling doesn't guarantee any disabled student will win their case. What it does is remove the school's easiest defense. "We didn't mean to" is no longer enough. The question is now: did you know, and what did you do about it?
That's a question with an answer. And the answer is usually in the student's file, in the emails the district didn't return, in the IEP meetings where the school said yes and then did nothing.
Why I'm writing about a case I'm not in
I'm not writing this because I've fought a school district over an IEP. I haven't. I'm writing it because I've spent my whole life autistic in a world that assumes it knows better than I do what I need, what I can handle, what I "really" mean when I say something plainly.
That assumption is smaller than a civil rights case and it is the same shape.
Authority substituted for autonomy, dressed up as concern. The person with the power to decide—whether that's a school administrator, a case manager, a supervisor, a cop—gets to define what the situation is, what the response should be, and whether the person on the other end of the decision had a legitimate need or was just being difficult.
AJT v. Osseo doesn't fix that. But it does say that when a school has the authority and uses it to do nothing, that's not a mistake. It's a choice. And choices have consequences.
The Eighth Circuit's standard let schools treat disabled students as if their rights were optional, as long as the violation looked accidental. The Supreme Court—unanimously—said no. You knew. You could have acted. You didn't. That's deliberate indifference, and that's enough.
Nine justices, zero dissents. That doesn't happen often, and it happened here.
Disabled students in the Eighth Circuit can now bring their cases under the same standard everyone else uses. Schools can't hide behind "we made a mistake" anymore. The question is what they knew and what they did, and the answers are usually in writing.
That's not a tidy ending. It's a tool. What happens next depends on who picks it up.
