Alex Le Pape was in high school when he told Lower Merion School District that a letter board was his preferred and effective means of communication and asked to use it throughout the school day. At an age when most students are simply trying to navigate adolescence, with that request, Alex began what would be a seven-year quest that started as the right to communicate his thoughts, feelings, and ideas in the way that worked for him and became an effort to secure that right for other public school students. The School District’s refusal to honor Alex’s preferred and effective method of communication touched off a seven-year legal battle that ultimately established (1) a public school student’s civil right to their preferred and effective method of communication, and (2) to have a jury—not some school administrator, hearing officer, or judge—decide factual disputes about the effectiveness of the communication.
In the landmark case—Le Pape v. Lower Merion Sch. Dist., a three-judge-panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit concluded that “[t]here is ample evidence from which a reasonable jury could conclude that the School District violated the ADA’s effective communication requirement by denying Alex his preferred method of communication without providing an effective alternative.”1 This ample evidence included Alex’s own testimony. Under oath, Alex testified that the letter board was effective for him and remained his preferred communication method. The Court emphasized Alex’s lived experience: a non-speaker who for the first 16 years of his life had “minimal communication,” could say only a few words, and could not express his own thoughts. He could not tell the school nurse how he felt, discuss college plans with his guidance counselor, participate in class, or engage fully in extracurricular activities or community-based instruction.2
Remarkably, Lower Merion refused to allow Alex to communicate with a letter board even in the face of other students’ successes at colleges and universities. This was not uncharted territory. The school district refused to accept Alex as the expert on his own life. For years, colleges and universities across the country have admitted, supported, and graduated non-speaking students who communicate through spelling or typing. Non-speakers have thrived at institutions such as Harvard Extension School, the University of California Berkeley, the University of California Los Angeles, Tulane University, Oberlin College, and Rollins College. Many have gone on to become advocates, scholars, and leaders in their communities and beyond.
One prominent example—though not the only one—is Hari Srinivasan, a Phi Beta Kappa, cum laude graduate of UC Berkeley and a Haas Scholar. Mr. Srinivasan earned a fellowship to pursue doctoral studies in neuroscience at Vanderbilt University and, in 2024, received the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship for his work. Since 2021, he has served on the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee. His commentary has appeared in news outlets including Time, Newsweek, Fortune, and Psychology Today.
Alex’s landmark case made clear that a non-speaker’s civil right to use their preferred method of communication does not begin with college. While the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) provides essential protections for school-age students with disabilities who attend public schools, those protections are only one part of the legal framework. A student’s civil rights do not end with IDEA. Three federal laws—the IDEA, the Rehabilitation Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)—obligate public schools, including charter schools, to meet the communication needs of students with disabilities. They address these obligations in different ways. A school district may still violate the effective communication requirement even though a student is able to make sufficient progress for a free appropriate public education (FAPE) under the IDEA. Critically, the Rehabilitation Act and the ADA’s effective communication requirement impose a greater obligation of equal access than the FAPE requirement. Federal guidance moreover is unequivocal: a student’s right to effective communication under the Rehabilitation Act and the ADA exists independent of, and in addition to, the IDEA.
Under the IDEA, a school district has discretion to select teaching methodology so long as the individualized education program (IEP) is reasonably calculated to provide meaningful educational benefit. That makes sense. The school district has teaching expertise.
Very importantly, however, the Rehabilitation Act and the ADA do not give a school district discretion to dictate a student’s means of communication. Just the opposite. That makes sense as well—each of us is the expert on ourselves. Professor Michael Ashley Stein, Ph.D., J.D., Executive Director of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability and one of the co-drafters of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) wrote a letter in support of Alex’s case. Dr. Stein observed “the CRPD structurally recognizes persons with disabilities as experts about their own lives. As such, both the letter and spirit of the CRPD privilege individuals’ preferences over those of professionals, however well-intentioned. Starting with its general principles, its provisions repeatedly validate that persons with disabilities have a right to choose their own destinies, whether that’s with regard to where they live, how they move, how they learn, what health care they access, how they vote, or how they express themselves, regardless of whether persons with disabilities use complex or nonstandard forms of communication.”7
The Rehabilitation Act and the ADA likewise “privilege individuals’ preferences over those of professionals.” As the Court in Alex’s case explained, a key difference between IDEA’s FAPE obligation and the Rehabilitation Act and ADA’s effective communication requirement “is the emphasis that the [school] must place on the disabled student’s preference when deciding what accommodations to provide.” The Rehabilitation Act and the ADA require a school district to “give primary consideration to the requests of the individual[] with disabilities” and to honor the student’s chosen method of communication unless it can demonstrate that an equally effective alternative exists.
The Le Papes’ case began with an administrative due process complaint alleging that the school denied Alex a FAPE under the IDEA and intentionally discriminated against Alex under the Rehabilitation Act and the ADA when it refused at least thirtythree requests over seventeen months for Alex to use a letterboard in school and to train staff so he could do so. These requests were supported by a speech therapist, psychiatrist, developmental pediatrician, and behavior analyst. The hearing officer concluded that the school had not denied Alex a FAPE and had not discriminated against him.11 When the Le Papes appealed, the district court held that they were not entitled to a jury trial on their Rehabilitation Act and ADA effective communication claims because those claims were “subsumed” by the IDEA denialofFAPE claim.12
The Third Circuit reversed, holding that a loss on an IDEA claim does not erase a student’s independent civil right to effective communication under the ADA and Rehabilitation Act, or to a jury trial when those civil rights are violated. In addition to Alex’s testimony, the Court found the testimony of seven treating clinicians, along with Dr. Barry Prizant—a speech pathologist and psycholinguist with fifty years of experience and recipient of ASHA’s highest honors, who confirmed the effectiveness of Alex’s letterboard communication after interviewing him and reviewing 185 minutes of video—to be “ample evidence from which a jury could conclude that the School District violated the ADA’s effective communication requirement by denying Alex his preferred method of communication without providing an effective alternative.”13 The Third Circuit held that “the Le Papes were entitled to have a jury evaluate the effectiveness of the communication supports for Alex.14
Although he did not get to use his preferred communication method in high school, he is still the expert on his preferred and effective communication and the rest of his life, and has secured the civil right of public school students who have come after him to be the experts on theirs.
Nicole Reimann, JD, is the founding partner of Reimann Law Group. She can be reached at Nicole@Reimann-Law-Group.com or (610) 680-2506, or online at Reimann-law-group.com.
Footnotes
1. Le Pape v. Lower Merion Sch. Dist., 103 F.4th 966, 982 (2024).
2. Id.
3. Id. at 979,
4. Id. at 981.
5. Id. at 981 (emphasis added).
6. Id. at 979-980.
7. Stein, Michael Ashley, PhD, JD, August 18, 2021 Letter to Nicole Reimann, J.L. v. Lower Merion Sch. Dist. 20-cv-1416, ECF 67-6, (E.D. Pa. November 16, 2021).
8. Id.
19. 103 F.4th at 979.
10. Id. at 980.
11. Id. at 973.
12. Id. at 976-977.
13. Id. at 982.
14. Id.
