Regents of the University of Michigan v. Ewing (1985)

Regents of the University of Michigan v. Ewing, 474 U.S. 214 (1985), is cited constantly in disability accommodation cases. It is worth knowing at the outset that it is not a disability case. It was a substantive due process challenge by a student dismissed from a six-year medical program after failing a qualifying examination.

What the Court said

The passage that matters is the standard of review for academic decisions:

When judges are asked to review the substance of a genuinely academic decision, they should show great respect for the faculty’s professional judgment. Plainly, they may not override it unless it is such a substantial departure from accepted academic norms as to demonstrate that the person or committee responsible did not actually exercise professional judgment.

That sentence has been imported wholesale into Section 504 and ADA litigation, and it is the foundation of what practitioners call academic deference.

The limit is inside the sentence

Read the standard closely and it contains its own qualification. Deference is owed to a decision that is:

• genuinely academic — a judgment about academic performance or competence, not an administrative preference, a scheduling constraint, or a cost decision wearing academic clothing; and
• an actual exercise of professional judgment — which presupposes that judgment was exercised.

The trigger for overriding is a decision so far from accepted academic norms as to demonstrate that professional judgment was not exercised at all. A conclusion announced without deliberation is not an exercise of professional judgment; it is an assertion. That distinction is where Ewing meets Wynne v. Tufts, which asks an institution to produce the record showing the judgment was made.

Why it matters that this is not a disability case

Ewing concerned whether a state university’s dismissal decision violated the Due Process Clause. It did not address whether a requirement is essential, whether a modification is reasonable, or how an institution should evaluate an accommodation request. Its use in disability cases is by analogy.

That analogy is not illegitimate — courts have adopted it consistently, and there are good reasons to be cautious about judicial second-guessing of academic standards. But it does mean that Ewing deference is not a rule Congress wrote into Section 504, and it does not displace the statutory and regulatory obligations that are written there: the duty to make reasonable modifications, the requirement that essential requirements be demonstrated, and the individualized nature of the inquiry.

How it appears in practice

Institutions cite Ewing when the issue is whether a student is qualified, whether a dismissal was justified, or whether a requirement is essential. It carries real weight in each. The Eleventh Circuit reaffirmed the point in 2024, observing that faculty must have the widest range of discretion in judging academic performance and entitlement to promotion or graduation, and that a student’s burden to establish qualified-individual status is not trivial.

The productive responses are almost never “the faculty were wrong about the academics.” They are:

• This decision was not genuinely academic — it was administrative, financial, or conventional.
• No professional judgment was exercised — there was no deliberation, no consideration of alternatives, no record.
• The people who made the decision had no relevant expertise in the disability at issue.
• The institution departed from its own published standards and procedures.

This is an individualized, fact-specific inquiry

Every determination described on this page is individualized. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights says so directly: asked whether there is a list of all possible academic adjustments, OCR answers no — adjustments “must be individualized,” and “sometimes the most effective and practical academic adjustment for a given situation is a new solution rather than an off-the-shelf response.”

The lists on this page are examples. They are not comprehensive, they are not a menu, and they are not a ceiling. Two students with the same diagnosis can need entirely different adjustments, and OCR’s own guidance uses paired examples to make that point — one student whose treatment plan calls for supervision, another whose plan calls for privacy, same condition, opposite accommodation. A school that applies a fixed package to everyone with a particular condition has already made an error, whatever the package contains.

Nothing here predicts what any particular school will do, or what any particular student is entitled to. That depends on facts this page cannot know.

This practice is student-side only

A Students’ Lawyer represents students and families. It does not advise, defend, or consult for colleges, universities, testing agencies, or licensing boards. Knowing how a school is supposed to run this analysis is what makes it possible to show when it has not — where the interactive process was skipped, where an essential-requirement finding was assumed rather than made, where a denial rests on a blanket policy rather than on this student’s documentation. The standard reads the same from either chair. The reason to know it cold is to hold the institution to it.

When it is time to call a lawyer

Most accommodation requests should never involve counsel. Register, document, ask, receive. The moments that actually warrant a call are narrower and more specific:

• The denial rests on a policy rather than on you. “We don’t do that” and “that isn’t one of our accommodations” are not individualized assessments, and OCR has said as much.
• An essential requirement is invoked but cannot be found in writing. A technical standard or program requirement that appears for the first time in your denial letter is worth examining.
• The school offers withdrawal, a leave, or a lighter program instead of a modification it never evaluated.
• Something changed after you asked. Requesting a modification is itself protected activity, and a grade, a referral, a schedule, or a tone that shifts afterward raises a separate retaliation question that does not depend on whether the original request was correct.
• A deadline is running. Internal appeal windows are short, an OCR complaint is generally due within 180 days, and a graduation or licensure date does not wait.
• The stakes have escalated. Once probation, dismissal, a conduct referral, or a technical-standards determination is on the table, the matter is no longer an accommodation request.

These are fact-specific questions, and the answer usually turns on details — what was asked, in what words, to whom, and what the file says. If you are not sure whether your situation is one of these, that uncertainty is itself a reasonable reason to ask.

Get in touch to talk through a specific situation, whether you are a student or a family.

General information about disability law in education. It is not legal advice, it does not create an attorney-client relationship, and it cannot account for the facts of your situation or the law of your jurisdiction. Guidance documents from the Office for Civil Rights are cited throughout; OCR guidance does not itself have the force and effect of law, and OCR states that its enforcement determinations are based on the particular factual circumstances of each individual case.