Barnes v. Gorman (2002) and What Damages Are Available

Barnes v. Gorman, 536 U.S. 181 (2002), answers a question every student in a serious dispute eventually asks: what can I actually recover?

The holding

The Court held that punitive damages are not available in private actions under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act or Title II of the ADA. The reasoning is structural: these are Spending Clause statutes, their remedies are coextensive with those under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and Title VI does not permit punitive damages.

Compensatory damages and injunctive relief remain available.

The other half of the answer: deliberate indifference

Compensatory damages under Section 504 or Title II are not available for a mistake. A plaintiff must show intentional discrimination, and courts generally apply a deliberate indifference standard: that the institution knew that harm to a federally protected right was substantially likely, and failed to act on that likelihood.

That is a meaningfully higher bar than negligence, and it is where many otherwise sympathetic claims end. A disability office that mishandled a file, lost paperwork, or applied a policy incorrectly has probably not been deliberately indifferent. An institution repeatedly told in writing that an approved accommodation was not being implemented, and which did nothing, is in a different position.

Importantly, deliberate indifference does not require ill will or animus. It requires knowledge and inaction.

The statute you sue under changes the remedy

This is the practical point that most often decides how a case is framed.

Section 504 reaches any program receiving federal financial assistance — which, because of federal student aid, means nearly every college in the country, public or private. Compensatory damages are available on a showing of intentional discrimination or deliberate indifference.
ADA Title II reaches public entities. Same damages posture.
ADA Title III reaches private colleges as places of public accommodation — but in a private action it provides injunctive relief only. No money damages.

So a student who has already suffered concrete harm at a private university and pleads only Title III has a claim that cannot compensate them. The answer is usually to plead Section 504, which reaches the same institution through its federal funding.

Exhaustion, briefly

Postsecondary students do not face the IDEA’s administrative exhaustion requirement, for the simple reason that the IDEA does not apply to higher education. The Supreme Court’s decisions in Fry v. Napoleon Community Schools (2017) and Luna Perez v. Sturgis Public Schools (2023) address when exhaustion is required for K–12 students bringing ADA or Section 504 claims; neither creates a hurdle for a college student.

Filing a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights is also not a prerequisite to suit. It is a parallel route. See filing an OCR complaint.

What this means practically

Most accommodation disputes are not damages cases and should not be approached as though they were. The realistic objectives, in order of how often they are achieved, are: the accommodation itself; correction of the academic record; reversal of a dismissal or sanction; and only then, in a narrow band of cases, money.

That ordering is not pessimism. It is the reason speed matters so much in this area — the relief that is actually available is the relief that is available while you are still enrolled.

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.