## Facts

- Boston University (BU) students with learning disabilities (including dyslexia and ADD/ADHD) brought a class action seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, plus individualized damages and contract remedies.
- BU adopted a more restrictive accommodations system requiring recent psycho-educational testing (generally within three years), performed by doctorate-level clinicians, and requiring periodic retesting to maintain eligibility.
- BU limited certain accommodations (e.g., extra time, note takers) but imposed an across-the-board refusal to allow course substitutions for foreign language and mathematics requirements.
- Plaintiffs challenged BU’s documentation requirements, its multi-layered evaluation and appeal procedures, and the categorical substitution ban as discriminatory and based on stereotypes about learning-disabled students.
- At a bench trial, the court heard expert testimony distinguishing “classical” learning disabilities (often lifelong and commonly evaluated by learning-disability specialists, including master’s-level practitioners) from ADD/ADHD (more variable and requiring clinical evaluation and updated testing).
- Plaintiffs also asserted that BU’s representations about providing accommodations created contractual obligations that BU failed to honor for some enrolled students, and alleged a hostile learning environment and related tort harms.

## Issues

1. Whether BU’s documentation and eligibility criteria (recency, evaluator credentials, retesting) unlawfully screened out qualified students with disabilities under the ADA and § 504.
2. Whether BU’s blanket refusal to consider foreign-language and mathematics course substitutions denied reasonable accommodations under the ADA and § 504, and whether substitutions would fundamentally alter academic programs.
3. Whether BU’s accommodation review and appeals process satisfied the requirement of individualized, interactive, reasoned decision-making.
4. Whether BU’s published representations about accommodating learning-disabled students created enforceable contractual duties, and whether BU breached them as to certain students.
5. Whether plaintiffs proved a legally cognizable hostile learning environment or other state-law tort liability.

## Decision

- The court held BU’s initial documentation requirements, as applied to students with learning disabilities such as dyslexia, violated the ADA and § 504 because they unnecessarily screened out or tended to screen out qualified students and were more restrictive than justified.
- The court upheld BU’s more stringent documentation and retesting requirements for students with ADD/ADHD as reasonable, given evidence of greater variability and the need for updated clinical assessment.
- The court held BU’s categorical prohibition on course substitutions for foreign language and mathematics violated the ADA and § 504 because it was not the product of a sufficiently reasoned academic judgment and was substantially influenced by uninformed stereotypes.
- The court ordered BU to use individualized, interactive evaluation of accommodation requests, including substitution requests, rather than rigid categorical rules.
- The court reaffirmed that disability law does not require waiver of essential academic requirements or fundamental program alterations, and that deference depends on a deliberative, reasoned academic process.
- The court found BU breached contractual obligations to some students based on express representations about accommodations and awarded compensatory damages for certain statutory and contract violations.
- The court rejected the broader hostile learning environment claim for insufficient proof of pervasive, legally actionable hostility.

## Legal Principles

- The ADA and § 504 prohibit eligibility criteria that screen out or tend to screen out qualified individuals with disabilities unless necessary and not more restrictive than required to serve legitimate institutional objectives.
- Reasonable accommodation determinations in higher education generally require an individualized, interactive, good-faith process rather than blanket exclusions.
- Courts may defer to academic judgment on whether a requirement is essential or whether a modification would fundamentally alter a program, but only where the institution shows a reasoned, deliberative basis for its decision.
- Policies grounded in stereotypes or misperceptions about disability can support a finding of discrimination.
- University representations about disability accommodations can create enforceable contractual obligations; failure to honor express commitments may support breach of contract and damages for affected students.

## Conclusion

The court enjoined BU from applying over-restrictive documentation rules to students with learning disabilities and from enforcing a blanket ban on foreign-language and math substitutions, required individualized accommodation review, upheld stricter documentation standards for ADD/ADHD, imposed limited contract damages for broken accommodation promises, and rejected a generalized hostile-environment theory.


Guckenberger v. Bos. Univ., 974 F. Supp. 106 (D. Mass. 1997)