Every fall Loge Elementary School in Boonville, Indiana, performs a public concert to celebrate the holiday season. However, during the past two years, the school had the program at Warrick County Museum, which is not wheelchair accessible.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana filed suit Thursday under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act.
The lawsuit is on behalf of Mycal L. Ashby, whose child attended the elementary school and was a member of the school’s choir during the 2014-15 and 2015-16 school years.
“People with disabilities are not second-class citizens, and governmental entities may not have programs that exclude them,” said Ken Falk, ACLU of Indiana Legal Director, in a release.
From an academic standpoint, Loge Elementary School earned an A in the Indiana Department of Education’s annual accountability of schools. The A-F school-grading system is known as Public Law 221 and is based on student performance on the state-wide tests and improvement on those tests.
After being excluded from her child’s Christmas program during the 2014-15 school year, Ashby and her husband contacted the school principal to express their concern and dismay that the school would have a school event like the concert in a venue that was not accessible to people with disabilities, according to the release.
Her husband contacted the principal again the following year when the family learned the concert would once again be presented at the museum, and he was assured the museum had been made wheelchair accessible.
But when they tried to attend, Ashby was forced to leave because she could not enter the building in her wheelchair.
Despite assurances she had received, no accommodations had been made to make the venue accessible to people with disabilities, according to the release.
“Having been disabled my entire life, my son and I have become very close,” Ashby said in the release. “He’s always been my little soldier and my little helper, and we were very excited to attend the concert.”
Ashby said when they discovered the venue would not accommodate her wheelchair, even though they had been told otherwise, they both broke out in tears, according to the release.
“He was distraught over having to choose between his mommy and his friends because he really wanted to perform, and I felt like the unwanted pet that gets shooed away at Christmas dinner because I was made to stay outside,” Ashby said in the release.
The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana in Evansville, on Sept. 15.
“It is so important to be at your children’s school events, and I feel it is inexcusable that I was excluded for the simple reason that I am in a wheelchair,” Ashby said in the release.
Alyson Malinger
