University prevents student from exempting a class for medical reasons

Question

One of my friends has a seizure disorder and is majoring in engineering at a college in South Carolina. His seizures are really severe/dangerous and are caused by doing certain kinds of math. All of the math that he's had to do in college so far has been managable, but the math in two of his current classes is causing him to have seizures. Because of this, he ended up having to drop one of the classes and skip the assignments for one section of the other one for his safety. The problem is that both of these classes are required for his major and the department is refusing to offer a medical exemption (or alternate assignment that would be safer for him to perform) for either of these classes. He already tried getting the college's disability office to advocate in his favor, but the department still wouldn't budge.

So my question is: If my friend took legal action against the university for this, would he be able to get an exemption or alternate assignment for these classes? To me, this seems like discrimination against someone with a disability, but I don't know much about law and you guys are the experts on this sort of stuff!

Answer 1

The college probably is not allowed to discriminate w.r.t. disability (on the assumption that they receive federal money), so they are probably in the realm of Section 504 and Iitle II. Here are the rules. On the face of it, the person might be handicapped. Start where is says

(A) any physiological disorder or condition, cosmetic disfigurement, or anatomical loss affecting one or more of the following body systems: neurological; musculoskeletal; special sense organs; respiratory, including speech organs; cardiovascular; reproductive, digestive, genito-urinary; hemic and lymphatic; skin; and endocrine; or

(B) any mental or psychological disorder, such as intellectual disability, organic brain syndrome, emotional or mental illness, and specific learning disabilities.

Then you look at the definitions of major life activities, impairment, and so on. The answers are not self-evident and often have to be litigated in novel cases. Being hard of hearing, color blind or hard of seeing does not count.

§104.12 says that the institution must make reasonable accommodations. That probably would not mean waiving the course requirement but could mean that they would have to find a different way to administer the exams. The institution could either argue that the student isn't handicapped (as is the current case for color blind students or those with age-related bad hearing and eyesight), or that no reasonable accommodation is possible. Either way, at the minimum, a formal complaint would be necessary.