Supreme Court’s A.J.T. v. Osseo Decision Opens the Door to Dismantling “Judicial Gloss”

SCOTUS’ ruling is a major victory for all students and their families. It reaffirms that the words Congress wrote matter, and that courts cannot impose extra burdens where the law does not allow it.

June 12, 2025, U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) issued a unanimous decision in A.J.T. v. Osseo Area Schools that challenges decades of legally questionable “rules” used against students who have disabilities.

SCOTUS struck down a judge-made requirement that students prove “bad faith or gross misjudgment” in order to prevail under Title II of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. This heightened standard—never written into either law—has been used for over 40 years to defeat legitimate discrimination claims.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the Court, emphasized that students who have disabilities already face “daunting challenges on a daily basis,” and that “those challenges do not include having to satisfy a more stringent standard of proof than other plaintiffs.”

This decision is more than a win for one student and family. It reinforces the principle that courts cannot invent more burdensome standards just because a claim involves education. It is a course correction, a wake-up call, and a direct challenge to “judicial gloss”—court-created rules that Congress never authorized. The decision opens the door to challenging such gloss in other areas of education law.

A Brief History of A.J.T. v. Osseo

A.J.T. is a Minnesota student who has a rare form of epilepsy that causes seizures, especially in the morning. Her previous school provided an accommodation—allowing her to receive instruction in the evening instead. But after she enrolled in Osseo Area Public Schools (OAPS) in 2015, the new district refused to provide the same support.

Her parents first filed a due process complaint under Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and a state administrative law judge (ALJ) ruled in their favor.

They then sued OAPS under ADA and Section 504. Both the federal district court and Eighth Circuit sided with the school district—not because they found the district’s actions appropriate, but because, under existing precedent, the family had not shown that OAPS acted with “bad faith or gross misjudgment.” That standard originated in the 1982 decision Monahan v. Nebraska.

Why Monahan v. Nebraska Shaped Decades of Special Education Law

In the case of Monahan v. Nebraska, parents of students who have disabilities sued Nebraska Department of Education, alleging the state’s administrative appeal process violated the federal Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA)—now IDEA—and that the state discriminated against their children under Section 504. At the time, Nebraska law allowed the state Commissioner of Education to overturn decisions made by impartial hearing officers. According to the decision, this issue later became dismissed “as moot because the allegedly offending provision of state law had been amended to make it clear that the Commissioner of Education could not change a decision made by a hearing officer.”

(Side note: It is interesting that in the case of Monahan, a state Commissioner is considered biased, yet state employees today repeatedly decide on state complaints filed under IDEA, addressing noncompliance of local education agencies the state agencies are supposed to oversee. Given the ruling of noncompliance against an LEA is a mark against the SEA, one wonders how the SEA employees can be considered unbiased. But, I digress . . . )

More significantly, the court rejected the parents’ Section 504 claim, holding that a denial of FAPE (free appropriate public education) did not automatically constitute discrimination. Eighth Circuit wrote:

“Manifestly, in order to show a violation of the Rehabilitation Act, something more than a mere failure to provide the "free appropriate education" required by EAHCA must be shown. The reference in the Rehabilitation Act to "discrimination" must require, we think, something more than an incorrect evaluation, or a substantively faulty individualized education plan, in order for liability to exist. Experts often disagree on what the special needs of a handicapped child are, and the educational placement of such children is often necessarily an arguable matter. That a court may, after hearing evidence and argument, come to the conclusion that an incorrect evaluation has been made, and that a different placement must be required under EAHCA, is not necessarily the same thing as a holding that a handicapped child has been discriminated against solely by reason of his or her handicap.”

This was the birth of the so-called “bad faith or gross misjudgment” standard. This more-than-FAPE rule was never written into law by Congress—but courts across the country began applying it anyway. Just a few years later, Congress passed the Handicapped Children’s Protection Act of 1986, adding 20 U.S.C. § 1415(l), which explicitly says that nothing in IDEA can be read to limit rights or remedies under the ADA or Section 504.

Even so, Monahan's gloss spread “like wildfire,” as Eighth Circuit later admitted, with lower courts following it for decades—making it nearly impossible for students to prevail in disability discrimination cases unless they could prove extreme misconduct. It allowed districts to argue that—even if a decision harmed a child or denied needed services—it was just “a difference of opinion” or “poor judgment,” not discrimination. It let serious problems go unaddressed.

In its 2023 decision in A.J.T., Eighth Circuit admitted its own role in spreading the rule “like wildfire,” despite Congress’s rejection. Yet even in acknowledging its flaws, it still applied the Monahan rule:

“In Monahan, we speculated that Congress intended the IDEA's predecessor to limit Section 504's protections, and without any anchor in statutory text, we added a judicial gloss on Section 504 to achieve that end. 687 F.2d at 1170-71. Congress rejected Monahan's premise just a few years later. See Handicapped Children's Protection Act of 1986, Pub. L. No. 99-372, 100 Stat. 796; 20 U.S.C. § 1415(l). But nonetheless, its bad faith or gross misjudgment rule spread like wildfire. See I.Z.M. v. Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan Pub. Schs., 863 F.3d 966, 973 n.6 (8th Cir. 2017) (collecting cases).

“Monahan has been questioned. See, e.g., Knox Cnty. v. M.Q., 62 F.4th 978, 1002 (6th Cir. 2023); Mark C. Weber, Accidentally on Purpose: Intent in Disability Discrimination Law, 56 B.C. L. Rev. 1417, 1455-64 (2015); AP ex rel. Peterson v. Anoka-Hennepin Indep. Sch. Dist. No. 11, 538 F. Supp. 2d 1125, 1145-46 (D. Minn. 2008); Howell ex rel. Howell v. Waterford Pub. Schs., 731 F. Supp. 1314, 1318-19 (E.D. Mich. 1990). But for the time being, it remains the law of our circuit.”

What Is “Judicial Gloss” and Why Does It Matter?

Judicial gloss occurs when courts add unwritten requirements or interpretations to a statute. In education law, courts have often done this to “harmonize” IDEA with Section 504, but the result has often been burdens that block access to rights.

In A.J.T., SCOTUS explicitly rejected justification for the gloss:

“Some courts . . . have come to apply a heightened intent standard to ADA and Rehabilitation Act claims in the educational services context. This standard traces back to the “bad faith or gross misjudgment” rule articulated by the Eighth Circuit in its 1982 decision in Monahan, in which the Eighth Circuit reasoned that to prove discrimination under the Rehabilitation Act in the educational context, a plaintiff must show “something more than a mere failure to provide” a free appropriate public education. 687 F. 2d, at 1170. The court explained a heightened showing of bad faith or gross misjudgment was necessary to “harmonize” the Rehabilitation Act and the IDEA and to reflect the proper balance between disabled children’s rights, state officials’ responsibilities, and courts’ competence in technical fields. Id., at 1171. . .

SCOTUS clarifies the problem with Monahan:

“The bad faith or gross misjudgment rule derived from Monahan is irreconcilable with the unambiguous directive of §1415(l). In imposing a higher bar for discrimination claims based on educational services as compared to other sorts of dis ability discrimination claims, the Eighth Circuit effectively read the IDEA to implicitly limit the ability of disabled schoolchildren to vindicate their independent ADA and Rehabilitation Act rights, thereby making it more difficult to secure the statutory remedies provided by Congress. Pp. 8–12.”

In other words, courts must apply the law as written and not add hurdles that Congress never approved.

What About Deliberate Indifference?

If “bad faith or gross misjudgment” is no longer the standard, what is?

SCOTUS’ A.J.T. decision does not eliminate all intent-based standards. It places Section 504 and ADA education claims on the same footing as other discrimination claims, where the standard of deliberate indifference may still apply.

Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and federal courts have continued to apply this standard in Section 504 and Title II disability cases. It doesn’t require proof of malicious intent. Instead, it asks whether a school knowingly ignored a serious risk or problem.

In fact, the A.J.T. ruling indirectly reinforces this standard. By rejecting the Monahan rule, SCOTUS signaled that disability discrimination claims in education should be governed by the same legal standards used in other ADA and 504 contexts—not stricter ones invented for schools.

Courts can still examine whether a school acted with deliberate indifference, but they cannot require families to prove “gross misjudgment” just to get in the courtroom door.

Why It Matters Now (Let’s Talk About Owasso and Tulare)

The A.J.T. ruling has implications far beyond Minnesota. It invites challenges to other judicial glosses—particularly in cases where courts or districts have narrowed federal protections through interpretation.

Two other cases stand out: Owasso v. Falvo and S.A. v. Tulare County Office of Education.

Under IDEA and FERPA, students and parents have a right to access all educational records “maintained” by educational agencies for the particular student. Owasso and Tulare resulted in a limited interpretation of “maintained” that school districts nationwide have used to withhold educational records.

In Owasso, the Supreme Court ruled that peer-graded assignments were not “maintained” under FERPA. The Court likened digital communication—emails in particular—to those student papers, saying:

“Emails, like assignments passed through the hands of students, have a fleeting nature. An email may be sent, received, read, and deleted within moments. As such, Student's assertion – that all emails that identify Student, whether in individual inboxes or the retrievable electronic database, are maintained “in the same way the registrar maintains a student's folder in a permanent file” – is “fanciful.””

In Tulare, a federal district court in California ruled that emails not placed in a student’s official file were not “maintained,” and therefore not educational records under FERPA or IDEA. Although it’s a single case out of California, many districts treat Tulare as national precedent.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Student Privacy Policy Office (SPPO) addressed this in a March 28, 2025, letter of findings for a complaint filed more than a decade prior. The parent alleged that a school district withheld educational records and the school district defended itself by citing Tulare.

SPPO didn’t find the district in noncompliance—however it didn’t find it in compliance, either. Instead, SPPO stated:

". . . there have been relevant federal district court decisions, such as the aforementioned Tulare decision, that may not be fully consistent with the position conveyed in our 2006 letter. Although these court decisions may have limited jurisdictional application, the Department is aware that some educational agencies and institutions across the country have adopted the Tulare holding and consider only those emails that are printed and placed in a student’s pupil file as “education records” under FERPA. To date, the Department has not adopted the holding in Tulare or similar cases, or issued any subsequent formal guidance or regulations that specifically addresses the applicability of FERPA to emails. Accordingly, the Department does not have a regulatory basis to support a conclusion that a FERPA violation occurred in this case. Further, we note that when an educational agency or institution, including school officials, sends emails containing personally identifiable information from a student’s education records to other parties, even if such emails are not maintained by a central custodian, such emails may only be disclosed in compliance with FERPA. Based on our analysis as referenced above, we find that, with respect to this allegation, we cannot find that the District violated FERPA as alleged. Please note that in reaching this conclusion, the Department is not itself adopting the analysis of the Tulare case, but only finding that the District did not violate FERPA in doing so. Finally, and as we previously noted, we realize that this issue is of importance to parents, students, and school officials, and we hope to issue guidance or regulations in the foreseeable future that will address this matter."

Nowhere does FERPA or IDEA state a definition of maintained that is consistent with the interpretations being used nationwide—even though SPPO itself states prior guidance it issued is inconsistent with Tulare.

Final Words

SCOTUS’ ruling in A.J.T. v. Osseo is a major victory—not just for one student, but for all families trying to protect their children's rights in education. It reaffirms that the words Congress wrote matter, and that courts cannot impose extra burdens where the law does not allow it.

As we look ahead, parents, students, and educators should be watching how this decision affects other areas—especially school policies built on outdated or judge-made interpretations.