Perez v. Sturgis Public Schools: How One Deaf Student Changed What Parents Can Demand

Miguel Perez attended public school in Sturgis, Michigan for 12 years. He is deaf. For most of those 12 years, the school assigned him a paraprofessional who was not trained in sign language. He did not receive qualified sign language interpretation. He was not learning in any meaningful sense.

When he was 20, the school district told him he had met his graduation requirements. He was handed a certificate of completion — not a high school diploma. He graduated without being able to read, write, or communicate at a level that would let him participate in adult life. His family had been misled about his educational progress throughout his schooling.

They filed a complaint against the district. The case eventually reached the United States Supreme Court, which in 2023 issued a unanimous decision that changed the landscape for special education litigation. Perez v. Sturgis Public Schools is the most significant special education case since Endrew F. in 2017, and its implications are still unfolding.

The Legal Barrier That Existed Before Perez

IDEA includes an exhaustion requirement. Before a parent can sue in federal court over claims related to the education of a child with a disability, they generally must first exhaust IDEA's administrative processes — filing for due process, going through the hearing, and appealing through the state process before reaching federal court. This requirement is designed to give schools and families a chance to resolve disputes within the education system before they become federal litigation.

The exhaustion requirement applies to claims "seeking relief that is also available under" IDEA. Over time, courts interpreted this broadly. If a parent wanted to sue under the ADA for disability discrimination in a school context, many courts required them to go through IDEA due process first — even if the ADA claim was distinct and the remedy sought (compensatory damages) was not available under IDEA at all.

IDEA does not provide compensatory damages. It provides equitable relief: compensatory services, reimbursement for private placement costs, prospective changes to programming. Monetary damages for what was taken from a child — for 12 years of denied education — are not available under IDEA. Only the ADA provides that remedy.

The exhaustion-as-prerequisite requirement created a trap. Parents could not get monetary damages from IDEA. But to sue under the ADA, many courts required them to exhaust IDEA first. For families like Miguel Perez's — where the harm was already done and the student was already out of the school system — exhausting IDEA due process was expensive, time-consuming, and could not produce the remedy they needed.

What the Supreme Court Decided

The Supreme Court issued a unanimous 9-0 decision on March 21, 2023, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

The core holding: parents who seek compensatory damages under the ADA do not have to first exhaust IDEA's administrative process, because monetary damages are not available under IDEA.

The exhaustion requirement applies to claims seeking "relief that is also available under" IDEA. Because IDEA does not provide compensatory damages, that relief is not "also available under" IDEA. Therefore, a plaintiff seeking monetary damages under the ADA in a school context can go directly to federal court without first completing the IDEA due process process.

The Court's reasoning was textual and straightforward: exhaust the IDEA process if what you want is available through IDEA. If what you want is not available through IDEA — and compensatory damages are not — then the exhaustion requirement does not apply.

The Perez family's ADA claim settled before the Supreme Court could address the merits of the discrimination claim itself. But the procedural ruling — that exhaustion is not required for ADA damages claims — was the ruling that matters.

Why This Changes the Leverage Dynamic

The practical effect of Perez is that monetary damages are now genuinely on the table in special education disputes, without the years-long prerequisite of IDEA administrative proceedings.

Before Perez, the sequence a school district could count on was: if a family wanted money, they had to first survive years of IDEA administrative proceedings (which favor districts that have experienced attorneys and institutional knowledge), and only then — if they won — could they potentially argue for ADA damages in federal court. Most families could not sustain that process. Many gave up.

After Perez, a family can go directly to federal court under the ADA seeking compensatory damages for disability discrimination, without first going through IDEA due process. The cases will still be difficult. Proving ADA discrimination in a school context requires showing intentional discrimination or deliberate indifference — a higher bar than IDEA violations. But the procedural barrier that forced families into IDEA exhaustion as a prerequisite is gone.

For school districts, this means that denying services or failing to provide meaningful education to students with disabilities now carries real financial exposure that cannot be deferred through procedural maneuvering. The risk calculus at IEP meetings has changed.

For parents, this means that when a district has seriously failed a child with a disability — particularly through intentional failures or deliberate indifference to clear legal obligations — there is a path to monetary compensation that does not require years of administrative proceedings first.

How Perez Differs From Fry v. Napoleon (2017)

Fry v. Napoleon Community Schools (2017) addressed a different but related aspect of the exhaustion question. In Fry, the Court held that IDEA exhaustion is not required when the plaintiff's claim is "essentially social" rather than "educational" — when the gravamen of the complaint is disability discrimination unrelated to the provision of FAPE.

The Fry test asked whether the alleged wrongdoing would be actionable in a school without any disabled students (suggesting it is a pure discrimination claim) and whether the same plaintiff could bring the same claim if they were a school employee rather than a student. If yes to both, the claim is not about FAPE and exhaustion is not required.

Fry was useful but limited — it helped families whose claims did not involve the IEP at all. If the claim was about educational services or the IEP, Fry still sent families through IDEA exhaustion.

Perez goes further. It does not ask whether the claim is educational or social. It asks whether the relief sought is available under IDEA. If the family wants compensatory damages, the answer is no — and exhaustion is not required regardless of whether the underlying claim involves IEP services or not.

Together, Fry and Perez significantly narrow the scope of IDEA exhaustion. Fry covers non-educational discrimination claims. Perez covers any claim where monetary damages are sought. What remains subject to exhaustion is narrower than it was before either decision.

The ADA Standard: Deliberate Indifference

Perez removes the procedural barrier. It does not make ADA school claims easy to win.

To recover compensatory damages under the ADA in an educational context, courts generally require a showing of "deliberate indifference" — that the district knew of the disability-related needs and deliberately chose to disregard them. Negligence, inadvertence, or even repeated failure that is not intentional may not satisfy this standard.

Miguel Perez's case involved 12 years of placing a deaf child with unqualified support staff while misrepresenting his educational progress to his family. That is not inadvertence. It is the kind of sustained, documented failure that can support an ADA damages claim.

Less egregious failures — an IEP that is too weak, a service that is occasionally missed, accommodations that are inconsistently provided — may satisfy the IDEA standard for FAPE violations but fall short of the deliberate indifference bar for ADA damages.

Parents should understand Perez as creating genuine leverage in serious cases, not as a general path to monetary recovery for every IEP dispute. The cases most suitable for ADA damages claims are those involving:

• Sustained, documented denial of meaningful services
• Misrepresentation of educational progress
• Failure to provide basic communication access (as in Miguel's case)
• Documented instances where district officials were aware of deficiencies and chose not to address them

What Perez Means for Negotiations

Even where an ADA damages claim might be difficult to prove at trial, the Perez ruling changes settlement dynamics. A district facing a family with credible evidence of serious educational failures now knows that the family can file an ADA damages claim in federal court without years of IDEA exhaustion first. The cost and risk of defending that litigation — not just the legal fees but the discovery process, the depositions, the potential exposure — creates a reason to settle that did not exist before.

This is leverage. It does not require actually filing a federal lawsuit to be effective. It requires the district to know that the option exists and that the family knows it.

For parents navigating serious disputes with districts that have been stonewalling or misrepresenting what is happening with their child's education, consulting an attorney about ADA claims is now more worthwhile than it was before 2023. The Perez decision is recent enough that many districts — and many parents — are still catching up to what it means.

The Broader Message

Miguel Perez spent 12 years in a school system that was supposed to educate him. He left without a diploma, without functional literacy, without communication skills that would let him participate in adult life. The system did not accidentally fail him — it failed him in ways that were documented, systematic, and known.

The Supreme Court's unanimous decision said, in effect, that families in situations like his deserve a meaningful path to accountability. That path does not require surviving years of administrative proceedings designed for a different kind of remedy. It is available directly, without the exhaustion requirement as a barrier.

The US Special Ed Parent Rights Compass covers IDEA procedural safeguards, due process rights, and when to consider ADA-based claims — including the documentation practices that matter most if a dispute becomes serious litigation.

Most families will never need to use Perez. But knowing it exists, and understanding what it changed, puts parents in a fundamentally different position at the IEP table than they were before March 2023.

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