Minnesota owes a group of special education students extra services after school was cut short

The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) will pay $3.2 million to settle a class action lawsuit alleging the state illegally cut off special education services to as many as 3,200 students.

The lawsuit involved two students whose services were terminated on July 1 after they turned 21 years old. It was adopted in 2020 by the Minnesota Disability Law Center, which argued that federal law requires education for students with special education until their 22nd birthday.

U.S. District Court Judge Patrick Schiltz ruled in favor of the students last summer, and the two sides began discussions that led to a settlement agreement in May.

Students will not receive cash payments but will instead be eligible for classes and other supports designed to help them live independently, says Sonja D. Peterson, staff attorney at the Minnesota Disability Law Center, citing as an example: ‘Courses such as maintaining your home. Using your bank account,” she said.

Peterson added that the classes will likely be taught by organizations such as the PACER Center and The Arc Minnesota, which would be reimbursed from the settlement fund.

MDE continued to deny wrongdoing as part of the settlement, but agreed that students who turned 22 years old between 2020 and 2023 would “benefit most by receiving compensatory services as soon as possible,” according to the settlement agreement.

At the time of Schiltz’s ruling, Maren Hulden, then the Disability Law Center’s supervising attorney, noted that students had been denied services during the COVID remote learning lockdown.

“Negative impacts on special education students meant that their learning was cut in two ways: first, they were denied the experiential environment inherent in transitional education, and second, their eligibility period was shorter than what federal law requires,” she said in a September 2023 report. press release.

Hulden now serves as general counsel for MDE.

In its defense, MDE had argued that students with disabilities were treated the same as students without disabilities under state law at the time, and that Minnesota traditionally offered secondary education to students without disabilities only until their 21st birthday.

State law has since been changed to comply with federal law.

MDE is now preparing to release the names of students who may be eligible to participate in the agreement to Continental DataLogix LLC, the company that will handle the claims.

Students can inform MDE until July 15 that they do not want their data to be made public or that they object to the agreement. Details can be found at: https://education.mn.gov/MDE/about/prod084332.

Under the agreement, 20% of the settlement fund, or $640,000, will go toward attorneys’ fees and administrative costs, leaving $2,560,000 to cover the claims filed. Any funds remaining more than six months after the distribution period will be divided equally between The Arc Minnesota, the Autism Society of Minnesota and the Multicultural Autism Action Network, the agreement said.