Disability Rights and Religious Liberty in Education

Abstract

In 1988, Sandi and Larry Zobrest became agents in the struggle for disability rights when they sued a suburban Tucson, Arizona, school district to obtain public funding for the signed language interpreter their deaf son Jim needed in high school. Such funding would have been unproblematic under the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (later retitled the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) if Jim went to a public high school, but they were intent on his attending a Roman Catholic school. The law was unclear on the legality of public money assisting students with disabilities to attend religiously affiliated schools, but it had long been a general principle of interpretation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment in the U.S. Supreme Court that governments must be cautious about dispensing public resources to religious institutions. Their successful lawsuit represents a classic American clash of rights. This history of the Zobrests’ lawsuit begins well before they went to court. The narrative extends back to Jim’s birth in 1974, a pediatrician’s diagnosis of deafness, and the efforts of his parents, who are not deaf, to seek resources for their son’s education prior to high school. It analyzes their desire to mainstream Jim for preparation for life in the hearing world, not in the Deaf community, and the succession of choices they made to that end.