G.T. v. Board of Education of Kanawha

Students in Kanawha County, West Virginia brought a class-action lawsuit against the Kanawha Board of Education for unlawfully failing to provide effective behavior supports to students with disabilities. 

Juvenile Law Center joined Education Civil Rights Alliance and twelve other advocacy organizations in filing an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in support of the plaintiffs. The brief argued that adopting the defendant’s interpretation of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(2), governing class certification, “would endanger class actions as a critical tool for securing civil rights generally and for students with disabilities in particular.” The brief further emphasized that the express purpose of Rule 23(b)(2) is to strengthen class actions as a weapon against discrimination, that such class actions are crucial to the pursuit of educational rights, and that the rule has been used to remedy a wide variety of civil rights violations. 

In a loss for youth, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that the plaintiffs failed to identify a single or uniform policy or practice that bridged all their claims, and thus failed to satisfy Rule 23(a)(2)’s commonality prerequisite for class certification. The Court declined to rule on the merits of the defendants’ Rule 23(b)(2) argument.