Amy Howe writes at SCOTUSblog:
When Stacy and Brent Fry obtained a goldendoodle for their five-year-old daughter, E.F., in 2009, they could not possibly have imagined that they would find themselves, seven years later, at the U.S. Supreme Court. But that is exactly where they were at the end of October, listening to the justices debate their case. The case began as a dispute over whether E.F., who has cerebral palsy, could bring the dog, named Wonder, to kindergarten with her, but it eventually became a clash over a fairly technical question about the interaction among a group of laws intended to assist people with disabilities.
Today the court issued a unanimous decision in the Frys’ favor. It ruled that, when families like the Frys file lawsuits under the Americans with Disabilities Act or the Rehabilitation Act, which bar discrimination against both adults and children with disabilities, they do not need to first go through the administrative proceedings required by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which ensures that children with disabilities receive the special education services that they need, unless the focus of the lawsuit is an allegation that the student did not receive the “free appropriate public education” guaranteed by the IDEA. Put another way, this means that a student who alleges that a school has discriminated against her because of her disability is not required to use the IDEA’s administrative proceedings simply because the alleged discrimination happened at school.
