RIDE disability rights case settlement disrupts R.I. House final budget preparations
The Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) may soon have to pay $1.86 million to settle a class action lawsuit that claimed the state had failed to provide special education services for students with disabilities between the ages of 21 and 22.
That news presented a last minute complication for the Rhode Island House Committee on Finance's fiscal 2026 state budget preparations Tuesday.
'We literally worked to, like, 15 minutes ago to do this budget,' House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi told reporters at a press briefing on the $14.33 billion spending plan that began after 9 p.m. Tuesday night. He cited a figure of nearly $2 million needed because of an adverse ruling against RIDE, but details were unavailable at the time.
The case of K.L. v. Rhode Island Board of Education is close to a settlement, Victor Morente, a RIDE spokesperson, confirmed via email on Wednesday morning. He said officials were still drafting a 'tentative' agreement that is still subject to approval from Rhode Island District Court as well as the Council on Elementary and Secondary Education, RIDE's governing body.
The settlement comes nearly seven years after a federal appeals court ruled that RIDE shortchanged students with disabilities in the 2010s. The class action suit began in 2014 with a single plaintiff: A Warwick parent filing on behalf of their daughter, a Rhode Island student on the autism spectrum who also had ADHD and severe anxiety.
But the student, named K.L. in the lawsuit, aged out of state-sponsored educational accommodations at age 21, before she could finish her high school diploma — something she should have been eligible to receive until age 22 under federal disability laws, her attorneys argued. K.L. had an individualized education program (IEP), which tailors learning for students with disabilities and helps to address their needs. These support programs are the roadmaps to ensure local schools education agencies supply students with a free and 'appropriate' public education per mandates derived from the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
Students 'who were over 21 and under 22 as of February 10, 2012, or turned 21 before July 1, 2019,' Morente wrote, would be eligible for relief under the draft settlement if they did not receive their high school diploma and aged out of support services under previous Rhode Island law.
When the case came before the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, it ruled in favor of RIDE by determining that 'public education' under the federal law would not include adult learning for students with disabilities over age 21. The class members then took their case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston, which vacated the lower court's judgment.
We literally worked to, like, 15 minutes ago to do this budget.
– House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi during a press briefing Tuesday
Senior Judge Kermit Victor Lipez wrote in the first circuit's October 2018 majority opinion that the lower court had relied on too 'narrow' a definition of public education.
'At present, if a 21-year-old student in Rhode Island does not complete high school for a non-disability related reason — say, because she was previously incarcerated — the state will provide her the services needed to attain a secondary-school level of academic proficiency and a route to obtain a high-school level degree,' Lipez wrote. 'However, if the same 21-year-old does not complete high school due to a qualifying disability, the state currently does not offer her ability-appropriate services to attain the same level of educational achievement.'
That imbalance violated disability law, the First Circuit decided, and the court boomeranged the case back to the District of Rhode Island for the two parties to determine remedies for class members.
Sonja Deyoe, the attorney representing class members since the suit's inception, wrote in an email Wednesday that the First Circuit ruling was pivotal for disability rights in Rhode Island.
'The law previously had limited that education until the age of 21,' Deyoe wrote. 'This was a major change for disabled individuals in Rhode Island.'
The First Circuit's ruling predates current RIDE leadership, and in August 2019, then-new education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green issued a memo instructing how state education officials should comply with the ruling.
'It is now clear that if they have not already done so, school districts … must comply with the recent First Circuit decision and should make services available and give careful consideration to the cost of prospective compliance,' Infante-Green wrote, adding that it was still unclear 'how appropriate remedies will be provided to those eligible class members.'
Deyoe echoed that sentiment, saying that determining damages under the lawsuit 'did span a very long time,' with both parties trying to avoid forcing a legal decision as to whether individual class members could receive relief for damages.
'Whether individualized compensatory education damages could be awarded to the individual class members was always disputed by the RI Department of Education,' Deyoe said.
The settlement also needs to be approved by the members of the class, Deyoe said. The currently draft spares class members from having to undergo individual trials to determine compensational education benefits.
'We are very hopeful the settlement will be approved, but the class members always have the opportunity to object and the Court may approve the settlement only with certain changes,' Deyoe wrote. 'We cannot predict that yet…While all of this took a long time to achieve, we do believe this is a good resolution for the class members.'
The funding source to resolve the settlement was not immediately available from RIDE or the House on Wednesday.
But Shekarchi detailed in a statement over email that the sudden news had cost the House some time on Tuesday.
'After the budget is posted for consideration by the House Finance Committee 48 hours in advance, there are always a number of policy decisions, options and calculations that must be finalized,' wrote the Speaker. 'The notification of a $1.86 million additional expense on the morning of the budget adoption certainly complicated the final process.'
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