Class Action Seeks to End Illegal and Abusive Restraints and Seclusion Practices Used Against Children with Disabilities in California

Student claims against the state of California and school officials
highlight pervasive use of condemned, trauma-inducing practices

CONCORD, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Four elementary school children with disabilities and their parents and
guardians filed a class action lawsuit Monday against the California
Department of Education (CDE), directors of the Contra Costa County
Office of Education, and staff at Floyd I. Marchus School to challenge
the illegal and abusive use of restraints and seclusion in non-emergency
situations.

The children assert that these abuses are the direct consequence of the
state of California and the CDE’s failure to meet their constitutional
responsibility for public education by their lack of oversight,
intervention, and enforcement of these dangerous interventions.

“No child — particularly ones with disabilities — should be restrained
and secluded by their school, as it traumatizes them,” said Michael
Steinberg, a partner at the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP that is
representing the students and families pro bono. “This lawsuit is about
stopping illegal and abusive restraints and seclusion in our schools and
to hold accountable those who permit the practices to occur.”

This class action, the first of its kind in California state court, is
brought by current and former Marchus students on behalf of themselves
and a class of similarly situated students and their guardians.

While attending Marchus, the elementary-age Plaintiffs were repeatedly
subjected to abusive, dangerous, and trauma-inducing restraints and
seclusion in non-emergency situations, including being thrown against
the wall, pressed into the floor, and routinely subjected to
inappropriate and punitive segregation. The use of extreme behavioral
interventions and dishonest record keeping at Marchus has resulted in
these young students suffering from physical harm, severe emotional
distress, developmental disruption, educational deprivation, and
reputational consequences.

“My daughter was picked up and thrown against a wall with her legs
pulled apart and her head bent towards the floor for throwing a
half-empty water bottle in the general direction of a Marchus staff
member,” said Elyse K., parent of two of the representative Plaintiffs.
“This reality is not only horrifying, but unmistakably present and
heartbreakingly real at Marchus. There are so many parents who do not
even know that schools like Marchus are still using what is essentially
corporal punishment. I plead for all parents to think about their
children and demand more from our state to end this abuse now.”

“Our Plaintiffs have been segregated in a school that promises to
correct student behaviors, but instead subjects them to controlling,
punitive restraints that set students back further,” reminds Arlene B.
Mayerson, Directing Attorney of Disability Rights Education and Defense
Fund (DREDF). “Attempting to control behavior through restraint,
seclusion and fear is dangerous, ineffective and counterproductive. It
must be exposed and stopped. DREDF’s work over four decades, advocating
for disabled children and their families, has never been more critical
to ensure that disabled students receive equal educational
opportunities.”

This lawsuit asks the court to hold the Defendants accountable for
allowing these young students to be subjected to these practices, and to
ensure that these students receive the education to which they are
entitled, in the least restrictive environment appropriate to their
needs, free from the threat of assault, battery, and trauma.

“There should be no safer place in the world for children than their
school. But in California, for all too many children with disabilities,
their schools are chambers of pain and terror, where unregulated
practices of restraints and seclusion do grave physical and traumatic
harm,” said Mark Rosenbaum, Director of Opportunity Under Law, the
impact litigation team at Public Counsel. “The state of California lacks
any program of oversight, intervention and enforcement to effectively
detect and stop such practices, resulting in not just denial of equal
educational opportunities, but the endangering of the lives and
well-being of children who all too often internalize the barbaric acts
against them as statements from adults that they are deserving of the
abuse to which they are subjected. Our suit is filed to rid all
California schools of these brutal practices that place children in
physical or psychological fear.”

Physicians, educators, and government officials have long condemned the
use of restraints and seclusion on children, identifying them as
ineffective and warning against their traumatizing and dangerous
effects. A 2009 report from the United States Government Accountability
Office documented hundreds of cases of the use of abusive restraints and
found that at least twenty of these cases resulted in the victim’s
death. Further, these restraints disproportionately affect students with
disabilities. According to a 2014 report from the U.S. Department of
Education, students with disabilities represented just 12 percent of the
national student population, but accounted for 58 percent of those
placed in seclusion and 75 percent of those subjected to physical
restraint.

Recently, the U.S. Department of Education announced that the Office for
Civil Rights (OCR), in partnership with the Office of Special Education
and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS), will provide technical assistance
and support to schools and their districts to oversee any inappropriate
use of restraint and seclusion in schools.

The complaint is available here: http://www.publiccounsel.org/tools/assets/files/1169.pdf

ABOUT

About the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund (DREDF): Founded in
1979, DREDF is a leading national civil rights law and policy center
directed by individuals with disabilities and parents who have children
with disabilities that works to advance the civil and human rights of
people with disabilities through legal advocacy, training, education,
and public policy and legislative development. Learn more about DREDF’s
work at dredf.org

About Public Counsel: Public Counsel is the nation’s largest pro bono
law firm – advancing impact litigation, pursuing legislative change, and
providing direct legal services that reach more than 30,000 people every
year in California and across the nation. Founded in 1970, Public
Counsel strives to achieve three main goals: protect the legal rights of
disadvantaged children; represent immigrants who have been the victims
of torture, persecution, domestic violence, trafficking, and other
crimes; and foster economic justice by providing individuals and
institutions in underserved communities with access to quality legal
representation. Learn more: www.publiccounsel.org

Contacts

MEDIA:
Lawrence Carter-Long
Director of Communications
Disability
Rights Education & Defense Fund
510.644.2555 x5256
lcarterlong@dredf.org

Joshua Busch
Director of Communications
Public Counsel
213.385.2977
x121
jbusch@publiccounsel.org

Ashley Carlton
Director
Finsbury
646.805.2087
Ashley.Carlton@finsbury.com