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On Monday, the United States Department of Education announced that five states are under investigation by their civil rights enforcement arm to determine whether policies banning mask mandates in schools are discriminatory against students with disabilities.
The bureau wants to ensure that students with disabilities are provided with equal educational opportunities.
Suzanne B. Goldberg, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Civil Rights division of the Department of Education, sent a letter to chief state school officials in South Carolina, Utah, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Tennessee to notify them of the investigation. The Department wants to determine if the state’s restrictions prevent students with disabilities from safely returning to in-person education.
The Assistant Secretary wrote that the federal law “guarantees qualified students with disabilities the right to a free appropriate public education in elementary and secondary school. This includes the right of students with disabilities to receive their education in the regular educational environment, alongside their peers without disabilities, to the maximum extent appropriate to their needs.”
Utah’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Sydnee Dickson, issued a statement on Monday in response to the investigation.
“While we appreciate [the Office for Civil Rights’] efforts to protect children, specifically students with disabilities, we think they have unfairly defined Utah as a state where mask mandates cannot occur. State law places these decisions at the local level with local health departments and locally elected officials. We look forward to working with OCR to clarify Utah’s positions on the issue.”
The Office of Civil Rights says that the investigation does not mean that the states violate the law, but if students with disabilities do not have the freedom to return safely to in-person learning, the states could be in violation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and/or Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990.
“The Department has heard from parents across the country — particularly parents of students with disabilities and with underlying medical conditions — about how state bans on universal indoor masking are putting their children at risk and preventing them from accessing in-person learning equally,” Miguel Cardona, Education Secretary, said. “It’s simply unacceptable that state leaders are putting politics over the health and education of the students they took an oath to serve. The Department will fight to protect every student’s right to access in-person learning safely and the right of local educators to put in place policies that allow all students to return to the classroom full-time in-person safely this fall.”
President Joe Biden issued a memorandum on August 18 directing Cardona to make sure that students return to classrooms safely “without compromising their health or the health of their families or communities.”
The Department of Education has not launched investigations into Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, or Texas. The agency says that the four states are not enforcing their bans on mask mandates, but they will continue to be monitored.
The Government can withhold federal funds if states are found to be in violation of the law.
