Cancer Accommodations in College

OCR’s cancer fact sheet covers both the disease and its treatment, and treatment is where most of the academic difficulty originates — immunosuppression, cognitive effects, nausea, and fatigue that does not resolve with rest.

If your college has refused, delayed, or failed to deliver an accommodation for cancer or its treatment, here is how I handle disability accommodation disputes under Section 504 and the ADA.

How OCR describes it

Drawing on the National Cancer Institute, OCR describes cancer as a disease in which some of the body’s cells grow uncontrollably, with symptoms varying by cancer type and by treatment. Treatment including surgery, radiation and chemotherapy can lower white blood cell counts, increasing infection risk, and cancer and its treatment may cause nausea and vomiting, motor changes, sensory changes, cognitive changes, weight changes, and mood or behaviour changes.

In an educational setting: absence for appointments, side effects, hospitalisation or care at home; difficulty concentrating; reduced immunity to colds or other contagious illnesses; increased thirst and dehydration and difficulty eating; changes in appearance; and an ongoing sense of fear or stress.

Primary source. U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, Section 504 Protections for Students with Cancer (June 2024). OCR wrote it for elementary and secondary schools; the definition of disability it applies is the same one that governs in college, though the obligations that follow from it differ. OCR keeps an index of its condition-specific guidance.

When it is a disability

According to the Department of Justice, cancer will, in virtually all cases, substantially limit “normal cell growth,” 28 C.F.R. § 35.108(d)(2)(iii)(F).

OCR names other major bodily functions including the immune system, and the major life activities of concentrating and eating, among others.

Coverage continues in remission. The episodic-or-in-remission rule means a student whose cancer is in remission remains covered where it would substantially limit a major life activity when active.

Modifications OCR names for this condition

The Office for Civil Rights gives the following as examples of modifications that may be appropriate. This is an illustrative list, not a complete one, and which of these — if any — is right for a particular student is an individualized question.

Making up work without penalty, and excusing late arrivals and absences.
Adjusting the schedule to include extra time to travel between classes, preferred locker or parking assignments, and periodic rest breaks or as-needed rest periods.
Preferred seating, and other modifications for a student who has difficulty concentrating or experiences changes in behaviour or mood.
Consuming water and snacks during instruction.
Adapting requirements for the level of activity in strenuous physical activities.
Prompt notification, in a non-personally identifiable form, when another student in the class has a contagious illness.
Using the restroom as needed.
Distance learning or instructional materials for use at home when symptoms or treatment intensify.

What schools get wrong

Cognitive effects dismissed. Chemotherapy-related cognitive impairment is real, documented and frequently unaddressed. It bears directly on memory-related requests — see memory aids.
Immunosuppression and attendance. A policy that requires physical presence during a period of neutropenia is a barrier, and OCR names remote provision of materials as a modification.
Treating remission as recovery for coverage purposes.
Harassment, which OCR notes may relate to absences or changes in appearance due to weight loss or gain or hair loss.

The four rules that decide coverage

Every one of OCR’s condition fact sheets carries the same boxed statement of how the coverage question is decided. It is short, it is favourable to students, and almost nobody reads it:

The question should not demand extensive analysis. Whether an impairment substantially limits a major life activity is not meant to be a fight.
“Substantially limits” is construed broadly, in favour of expansive coverage, to the maximum extent the statutory language permits.
An impairment need not prevent or severely restrict anything. It is enough that it substantially limits the activity as compared to most people in the general population. And an impairment that is episodic or in remission is a disability if it would substantially limit a major life activity when active.
Medication is disregarded. The beneficial effects of mitigating measures — medication above all — must be left out of the assessment. You are evaluated as you would be untreated.

OCR adds one more line to every sheet that is worth committing to memory: a school may always accept that a student has a disability without any documentation or medical tests. Documentation may be requested. It is not a precondition the law imposes.

And this, which answers the most common self-defeating assumption students make: a student may need modifications even if they are not substantially limited in the major life activity of learning. Good grades do not end the inquiry.

Accommodations for other conditions

The legal test is the same whatever the diagnosis — what matters is the functional limitation and the barrier it creates. These pages cover other conditions:

Cancer is covered by regulation — including in remission

The Department of Justice regulation provides that cancer will, in virtually all cases, substantially limit “normal cell growth.” 28 C.F.R. § 35.108(d)(2)(iii)(F). Normal cell growth is a major bodily function and therefore a major life activity. OCR adds that cancer can limit other major bodily functions including the immune system, and can limit concentrating and eating.

Two statutory rules matter especially here. An impairment in remission is still a disability if it would substantially limit a major life activity when active — 42 U.S.C. § 12102(4)(D) — so a student who has finished treatment does not lose protection. And Section 504 covers a record of an impairment and being regarded as having one, which is what protects a student whose treatment ended years ago from decisions made on the basis of that history.

The affirmative duty most students never learn about

OCR’s cancer fact sheet contains something almost nothing else in this area does — an obligation that runs towards the student rather than merely permitting them something:

Providing prompt notification, in a non-personally identifiable form, when another student in the class has a contagious illness such as influenza, COVID-19, chicken pox or measles.

Read the structure of that. It is an affirmative disclosure duty owed to an immunocompromised student, deliberately drafted so that the other student is not identified. Schools frequently refuse this by invoking the other student’s privacy; OCR has already answered that by specifying the non-identifying form. If you are immunocompromised from treatment, this is worth requesting by name, in writing, at the start of the term rather than after an exposure.

The rest of the list, and the two items unique to it

Make-up work without penalty and excused absences for appointments, treatment side effects, hospitalisation or care at home.
Schedule adjustments for extra time to travel between classes, and preferred parking — the only OCR fact sheet that names parking.
Periodic or as-needed rest breaks, and preferred seating.
Water and snacks during instruction, for thirst, dehydration or difficulty eating.
Adapting the required level of activity in strenuous physical components.
Restroom access as needed.
Distance learning or instructional materials at home when symptoms or treatment intensify.

The travel-time and parking items sound minor and are not. Fatigue is the most under-accommodated effect of cancer treatment, precisely because it does not show up in any single assessment — it shows up as a term in which everything took longer. Accommodations that reduce the physical cost of getting through a day are doing more work than an extra half hour on a final.

Appearance, harassment, and what OCR expects afterwards

OCR names changes in appearance among the effects, and ties harassment specifically to weight change, hair loss, and inability to participate in certain activities. Section 504 may require a school to respond to that harassment — including where the student is regarded as having a disability or has a record of one.

And the retrospective remedies are the ones worth asking for if the damage is done: an opportunity to re-take classes, tests or assignments with appropriate modifications and without penalty, and to have absences excused and student records corrected where they were recorded as unexcused. A student who has already lost a term to treatment is not asking for future flexibility — they are asking the school to unwind a record that illness created. Those are different requests, and only one of them repairs a transcript.

The law that governs a college accommodation request

Two statutes do the work. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. § 794, reaches every school that takes federal money — which is very nearly all of them. The ADA covers the rest: Title II for public colleges and universities, Title III for private ones as places of public accommodation. In the Eleventh Circuit, which governs Florida, claims under the two are analysed under the same standards.

The regulation that actually decides most disputes is 34 C.F.R. § 104.44, and it is worth knowing what it says on both sides of the line.

What it requires. A college must modify academic requirements where necessary so they do not discriminate — and the regulation names examples: changes in the length of time permitted to complete a degree, substitution of specific courses, and adaptation of how a course is conducted. It requires modified examination formats so that results measure achievement rather than the disability, unless the disability is what the test is measuring. And it requires auxiliary aids — taped texts, interpreters, library readers, adapted classroom equipment.

What it expressly does not require. The same regulation says a college need not provide attendants, individually prescribed devices, readers for personal use or study, or other devices or services of a personal nature. A student who asks for a personal aide or a personal reader is asking for something § 104.44 does not oblige the school to supply, and it is better to know that at the outset. The regulation also provides that academic requirements the school can demonstrate are essential to the instruction, or to a directly related licensing requirement, are not discriminatory.

“Otherwise qualified” — and where Florida students lose

Protection runs only to a student who is “otherwise qualified.” Under Southeastern Community College v. Davis, 442 U.S. 397 (1979), that means able to meet the programme’s requirements in spite of the disability, and the statute does not require substantial modifications to the programme itself. The Eleventh Circuit put it plainly in Goldberg v. Florida International University, 838 F. App’x 487 (11th Cir. 2020): a qualified student is one who can meet the programme’s academic standards with or without accommodations.

The recent Florida cases show where that bites. In Nehme v. Florida International University Board of Trustees, 121 F.4th 1379 (11th Cir. 2024), a medical student who failed at least eight courses — five of them after being placed on academic probation — was held not to be a qualified individual, and it counted against him that he conceded he had received proper accommodations for four of the failed exams. In J.A.M. v. Nova Southeastern University, 646 F. App’x 921 (11th Cir. 2016), repeated extended leaves of absence, exam rescheduling and excusal of misconduct were held to be accommodations that would fundamentally alter an osteopathic medicine programme.

The practical lesson runs the other way, though, and it is the reason timing matters more than almost anything else: accommodations are forward-looking. A request made after a run of failures is fighting the record those failures created. The same request made before them is a different case entirely.

The school has to actually think about it — the strongest student-side rule

Deference to academic judgment is real. Courts will not override a genuinely academic decision 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” — Regents of University of Michigan v. Ewing, 474 U.S. 214, 225 (1985) — and courts in Florida give the same respect to a school’s judgment about the qualifications its programme requires. But deference is earned, not assumed, and that is where cases are won.

Under Wynne v. Tufts University School of Medicine, 932 F.2d 19 (1st Cir. 1991) (en banc) — applied in Florida in Forbes v. St. Thomas University, 768 F. Supp. 2d 1222 (S.D. Fla. 2010), aff’d, 456 F. App’x 809 (11th Cir. 2012) — a school has “a real obligation” to “seek suitable means of reasonably accommodating” a student with a disability, and has to put in a factual record showing that its officials “considered alternative means, their feasibility, cost and effect on the academic program” before concluding that no reasonable accommodation was available. A conclusory assertion, with no evidence of deliberate consideration, is not enough. So the question to ask of any denial is not only “was this decision right?” but “is there any record that anyone actually weighed the alternatives?” Often there is not.

Two further points help. Whether an accommodation would impose an undue burden or fundamentally alter a programme is generally a question of fact — Redding v. Nova Southeastern University, 165 F. Supp. 3d 1274 (S.D. Fla. 2016) — which means it is not something a school can simply assert its way past. And to establish fundamental alteration a school has to identify the essential requirement, show that modifying it goes to the core of the programme, and show it considered whether any lesser alternative existed.

The interactive process, and a warning about how students lose it

Section 504 and the ADA do not use the phrase “interactive process” for college students the way employment law does, and the Eleventh Circuit has not held in a published decision that failing to engage in one is independently actionable — that remains unsettled. What Florida courts do recognise, from Forbes, is that the process is genuinely two-sided: the student carries the initial burden to identify the disability and make the case for specific accommodations, after which the school must consider the request and make a reasoned decision.

Here is the warning. In Amy v. Florida International University Board of Trustees, 2024 WL 5323717 (S.D. Fla. Nov. 20, 2024), the court found that the student broke down the interactive process by insisting on one particular accommodation and resisting any alternative. Where a school does not obstruct the process and makes reasonable efforts to communicate and to accommodate on the information it has, liability does not follow. Refusing every alternative on offer is a way to lose a case that could have been won — ask for what you need, but engage with what is proposed, and put the reasons in writing.

Technical standards

Published technical standards get real deference. Following Southeastern Community College v. Davis, the Eleventh Circuit treats a school’s academic standards as entitled to deference as the statement of the qualifications its programme requires: Wood v. President & Trustees of Spring Hill College, 978 F.2d 1214, 1222–23 (11th Cir. 1992); see also Redding v. Nova Southeastern University, 165 F. Supp. 3d 1274, 1285 (S.D. Fla. 2016). They are not untouchable. The Section 504 regulation shields only the academic requirements a school can demonstrate are essential to the instruction or to a directly related licensing requirement, 34 C.F.R. § 104.44(a), so the showing is the school’s to make. And under Wynne, the school has to show that the people responsible actually considered the alternatives — their feasibility, cost and effect on the programme — rather than simply pointing to the standard. Courts will not second-guess curriculum or clinical content on a thin record, but a standard that appears nowhere until the moment it is used to exclude a student is a different matter from one published and applied consistently for years.

Retaliation

Asking for accommodations is protected activity, and so is complaining about how a request was handled. A retaliation claim requires protected activity, the school’s knowledge of it, an adverse action, and a causal link — with but-for causation, and the familiar burden-shifting that follows. Retaliation claims sometimes survive where the underlying accommodation claim does not, because they turn on what the school did after the request rather than on whether the student was qualified.

Where to complain, and what it is worth

There are two routes and they are not alternatives you have to choose between carefully — a student may do both.

The Office for Civil Rights. A complaint to the U.S. Department of Education’s OCR must be filed within 180 days of the discriminatory act. It costs nothing and needs no lawyer, though what you put in it matters.

Court. A postsecondary student does not have to exhaust administrative remedies before suing under Section 504 or the ADA. Filing with OCR is not a prerequisite.

On remedies, be realistic. Injunctive relief — reinstatement, the accommodation itself, correction of a record — and attorney’s fees do not require proof of intentional discrimination. Money damages do, generally shown through deliberate indifference: that the school knew of a substantial risk of discrimination and failed to act.

And one recent development that changes what these cases are worth. In Cummings v. Premier Rehab Keller, 596 U.S. 212 (2022), the Supreme Court held that emotional distress damages are not recoverable under Section 504, because it was enacted under the Spending Clause and funding recipients never consented to that exposure. The Eleventh Circuit extended that to ADA Title II in A.W. v. Coweta County School District, 110 F.4th 1309 (11th Cir. 2024). Earlier Eleventh Circuit authority allowing emotional distress damages, Sheely v. MRI Radiology Network, 505 F.3d 1173 (11th Cir. 2007), no longer holds. For most students this means the value of a case lies in getting the accommodation, the place, or the record put right — not in a damages award for the distress of the fight.

This page describes how these rules work in general. It is not legal advice about your situation, and no outcome can be promised in any individual case.

Common questions

Am I still covered in remission?

Yes, under the episodic-or-in-remission rule.

Can I get a parking space closer to class?

OCR names preferred parking assignments expressly.

Can I take a semester remotely?

OCR names distance learning or provision of materials for home use when symptoms or treatment intensify. Whether it can be done in a given program depends on the program.

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.

If any of that describes where you are, two pages go further: when the school refuses the accommodation covers how a refusal is challenged at the school itself, and licensing and entrance exam accommodations covers the separate track for exams, where the testing agency rather than your school decides.

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.