John B. Roesler is an accomplished trial and appellate attorney who has obtained precedent-setting results in federal court litigation involving School Law. He represents clients in constitutional tort litigation, personal injury and wrongful death, as well as discrimination because of disability, in the educational setting.
Mr. Roesler’s Garcia v. Miera case established public school children’s Fourteenth Amendment liberty interest protection from excessive punishment, forming the basis for jury instructions in cases of educator misconduct. His client, a third-grade girl, was held upside down by the vice principal while being struck with a splintered board by the principal of the school.
Mr. Roesler also represented the parents of a boy who died while at school in a small town in Western Michigan. The boy had a known heart defect, but his teacher forced him to run the “gut run”. During the extensive sprint, used as punishment for talking in line, the boy’s heart failed. A substantial wrongful death settlement was obtained. Following a successful jury verdict for another young client, a fourth-grade boy, in an excessive corporal punishment case (use of a wooden paddle) that Mr. Roesler litigated in U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico, many school districts in that state abolished corporal punishment of students.
Mr. Roesler’s School Law practice includes:
- Liability for inappropriate or excessive student discipline, including:
- Corporal punishment,
- Isolation,
- Restraints,
- Failure to supervise students,
- Failure to provide a safe school environment for students,
- Sexual abuse of students,
- Discriminiation because of disability, ADA and Section 504,
- Mistreatment and mishandling of Special Education students, including failure to provide an adequate Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE).
His work is published in a treatise for American Jurisprudence, 48 Am. Jur. Trials 587, and has been discussed in Newsweek, the front page of The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He has been a guest on nationally televised talk shows and a speaker at National Association for the Prevention of Child Abuse conventions.
Mr. Roesler specializes in ADA and Section 504 protections of Students with Disabilities. His practice covers each educational level, private and public, primary and secondary, as well as higher education, college, university and professional schools, including medical school students, a subcategory where there has been and continues to be a great deal of litigation. He recently fought an ADA case against the University of Colorado Medical School all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. He notes that intentional discrimination can be shown in these cases by failure to make a reasonable accommodation. Whether an accommodation is reasonable becomes the key issue to prove through the use of an expert witness. Mr. Roesler has extensive experience working with the medical profession and forensic Ph.D. psychologists in establishing disability and psychological harm.
Regarding primary and secondary public school education, Mr. Roesler is a Continuing Legal Education (CLE) seminar presenter to other Colorado attorneys on the subject of the IDEA and Alternative Court Remedies. He is a firm believer in direct court action, where appropriate, to reduce costs, delays, and errors of the IDEA administrative hearing process. The IDEA administrative procedures, although they have their place, in many instances can present barriers to meaningful, timely justice for students with disabilities. There are judicial means of circumventing the IDEA exhaustion of remedies “requirement”, namely by direct ADA, Section 504 or Section 1983 court action when the administrative route is futile. Futility includes attempting to obtain monetary damages under the IDEA. Such damages, e.g. monetary relief for physical or psychological harm, are not available for violation of the IDEA in this Tenth Circuit. IDEA hearing officers do not have the power to award such relief. Futility and harm may occur where there is persistent refusal to provide necessary educational services, a FAPE.
In Fry v. Napoleon Community Schools, 137 S.Ct. 743 (2017), the U.S. Supreme Court articulated a somewhat fluid test for determining when relief is or is not available under the IDEA. The “educational in nature” factor in the Court’s test is important in determining whether exhaustion of IDEA “administrative remedies” is necessary. By way of interest, footnote 4 of the Fry decision notes that, “We leave for another day a further question: Is exhaustion required when the plaintiff complains of the denial of a FAPE, but the specific remedy she requests – money damages for emotional distress – is not one that an IDEA hearing officer may award?” This is an issue that cries out to be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court.
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