Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. § 794, is the statute that reaches your school — whether or not it is public.

That is the part students most often get wrong. Section 504 applies to any programme or activity receiving federal financial assistance, and a private university whose students receive federal student aid is receiving federal financial assistance. Which means the private college that just told you the Constitution does not apply to it was telling the truth about the wrong statute.

What it says

The operative language is a single sentence: no otherwise qualified individual with a disability shall, solely by reason of the disability, be excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, or subjected to discrimination under any programme or activity receiving federal financial assistance.

Two phrases in it do all the work.

“Otherwise qualified” means someone who can meet a programme’s necessary requirements in spite of the disability. Southeastern Community College v. Davis, 442 U.S. 397 (1979). The fight in almost every professional-programme case is over which requirements are genuinely necessary and which are simply the way things have always been done.

“Solely by reason of” sounds like a high bar and functions less strictly than it reads, because the regulations impose affirmative obligations that do not depend on proving animus.

The regulations are where the practical rights live

The statute is short. The Department of Education’s regulations at 34 C.F.R. Part 104 are where the enforceable detail sits, and Subpart E governs postsecondary education. The provisions worth knowing by number:

§ 104.44 — academic adjustments. An institution must make modifications to academic requirements where they are necessary to avoid discriminating against a qualified student. It expressly need not modify requirements that are essential to the programme of instruction — which is the whole battleground — and the same section requires auxiliary aids where they are needed for effective participation. It also expressly bars rules that limit participation, such as prohibitions on recording lectures where recording is what makes the lecture accessible.

§ 104.42 — admissions. An institution may not make a pre-admission inquiry as to whether an applicant has a disability, and may not use admissions criteria that screen out disabled applicants unless the criteria are shown to be necessary.

§ 104.43 — treatment of students. A student may not be excluded from any course, programme or activity, including extracurricular ones, on the basis of disability.

§ 104.7 — the coordinator and the grievance procedure. The least-known and most immediately useful. A recipient of a certain size must designate a person responsible for coordinating compliance and must adopt grievance procedures providing prompt and equitable resolution.

Asking your institution to name its Section 504 coordinator, in writing, is one of the most effective single steps available. It routes the matter past the office that has been refusing you, it puts a named person on notice, and a school that cannot identify one has a compliance problem of its own.

How it fits with the ADA

They overlap almost entirely and reach institutions differently.

Section 504 reaches recipients of federal funding — effectively every college.
ADA Title II reaches public entities, which is where a state university sits.
ADA Title III reaches private entities operating places of public accommodation, which includes private colleges and the bodies that run licensing and professional examinations.

The substantive standards are largely coextensive, so claims are usually pleaded together. The differences that matter are procedural — who can be sued, what immunity applies, and what remedies survive.

The ADA Amendments Act of 2008 then rewrote the coverage question for both, directing that “substantially limits” be construed broadly and that the beneficial effects of mitigating measures be disregarded.

What the school has to show before it says no

A refusal has to be the product of an assessment, not a policy.

Where a school claims a requirement is essential, it has to be able to show it reached that conclusion by a considered process rather than by assertion — the reasoning in Wynne v. Tufts University School of Medicine. And before dismissing a disabled student for failing to meet its standards, an institution bears the burden of showing it conscientiously considered whether reasonable accommodation would have allowed the student to meet them. Wong v. Regents of the University of California, 192 F.3d 807 (9th Cir. 1999).

Two answers therefore fail as a matter of law however confidently they are given: “we don’t do that” and “that is a technical standard.” Neither is an individualised assessment. Getting either in writing is worth more than arguing with it in the room.

What you can actually get

Two routes, and they are not alternatives.

A complaint to the Office for Civil Rights. Free, no lawyer required, filed on a deadline measured in days rather than years. OCR can obtain systemic change. It cannot get you money, and it moves slowly.

A lawsuit. There is a private right of action under Section 504, and no requirement to exhaust the administrative route first in the higher-education context. What is recoverable is narrower than students expect: emotional distress damages are unavailable under the Spending Clause statutes after Cummings v. Premier Rehab Keller, 596 U.S. 212 (2022), and punitive damages are unavailable under Barnes v. Gorman, 536 U.S. 181 (2002).

What survives is the part that usually matters more: provable economic loss, every form of equitable relief — the accommodation ordered, the record corrected, the dismissal vacated, the student reinstated — and attorney’s fees under 29 U.S.C. § 794a(b).

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. Institutions read Section 504 as a list of things they are permitted to refuse. Knowing precisely what the regulations require of them — by section number — is how that reading gets corrected.