Monday, August 31st 2015     

On August 7, 2015, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California upheld significant changes to LSAC's testing accommodation policies and practices. The court's decision upheld almost all the changes to LSAC's testing accommodation procedures recommended in a report by a panel of experts created pursuant to a 2014 consent decree that resolved allegations under the Americans with Disabilities Act in Dept. of Fair Employment & Housing (DFEH) v. Law School Admission Council, Inc. (LSAC), Case No. 12-1830--EMC (N. D. Cal). The District Court invalidated a limited portion of the recommendations (generally regarding timing for evaluating testing accommodation requests and how recent documentation in support of a request for testing accommodations based on mental or cognitive impairment must be) but upheld the bulk of the recommendations as written, including those that: categorize the type of documentation that will be sufficient for various types of testing accommodations requests, establish criteria for evaluating requests, require an automatic review by outside professionals before any request may be denied, and create an appeals process for those candidates whose testing accommodation requests are ultimately denied. LSAC will implement the upheld recommendations starting immediately for testing accommodation requests related to the December 2015 LSAT administration and later administrations.

For more information about the Court's decision in DFEH v. LSAC or the ADA,

please visit our ADA website at http://www.ada.gov/

or you may also call the Justice Department's toll-free ADA Information Line at 800-514-0301 or 800-514-0383 (TDD). 


 Article Credit: U.S. Department of Justice

Contributor Credit: CASI's Staff provided this story; if you know of an article that is relevent to CASI, please share by sending an email to info@casinstitute.