Case: Department of Justice Investigation of the Special School District of St. Louis County

On May 8, 2024 the Department of Justice (DOJ) opened an investigation into the Special School District (SSD) of St. Louis County. SSD is the largest provider of special education in Missouri. Since that time, with the assistance of a consultant who is an expert in the provision of special education services, DOJ reviewed the District's policies and procedures, Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), Behavioral Intervention Plans (BIPs), Functional Behavioral Assessments "FBAs), complaints, reports, disciplinary referrals, and incident reports regarding the use of seclusion and restraint from the investigative period. DOJ also conducted remote interviews with some District-level officials. The District allegedly failed to fully cooperate with the DOJ investigation and repeatedly failed to produce necessary information. The District only allowed the DOJ to visit the schools on weekends with no students or staff present. On September 29, 2025, the DOJ concluded that the investigation was incomplete, but that enough evidence had been collected to identify SSD's "significant noncompliance" with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Since the investigation was rendered incomplete, however, the DOJ noted that the scope of that noncompliance may be understated.

One of the major findings highlighted that the District failed to provide students with proper interventions to support and prevent behavioral concerns. Instead, the District frequently treated seclusion and restraint as a routine response to student behavior. During the investigative period, the District averaged 11 exclusions a day. At one observed school, the school enrolled fewer than 100 students, but used seclusion 1, 667 times. 91% of students at that school were secluded during the investigative period. That same school restrained more than 40% of students. These statistics for the use of restraint and seclusion were comparable across all schools in the District. The DOJ suspects these numbers are underreported because the numbers include only the seclusion and restraints SSD reported on the spreadsheet it produced to DOJ during the investigation. The investigators noted "strong reasons to believe that the District massively underreported its use of seclusion and restraint."

The frequency of use of these measures could be attributed to the complete lack of standardization or procedures around when to use them. Restraints were frequently used in troubling scenarios such as when there was no indication of imminent danger. For example, a second-grade student was secluded for one and a half hours for knocking over her teacher's coffee.  Furthermore, the incident reports reveal that the District has a common practice of using timers to arbitrarily determine when a student can leave seclusion, rather than ending the seclusion when the student stops being a threat. Even more concerning than secluding students in the absence of imminent danger, the District frequently secludes students who were engaging in self-harm or expressing suicidal ideation, which exacerbates the risk of serious harm to the student. An expert identified more than 50 incidents involving students subjected to seclusion engaging in self-harm while in the seclusion room. Students routinely engaged in unsanitary behavior in the seclusion rooms, such as urinating, defecating, or vomiting, with no intervention by staff. The expert noted that these kinds of behaviors are often a trauma response to being isolated in a small room following an escalated behavioral incident and are exacerbated by the restriction of toilet use by staff during seclusion.

The DOJ requested the District issue a number of remedial measures:

1. Ending the use of seclusion and supine restraint.

2.  Prohibiting the use of restraint unless the student's behavior poses an imminent danger of physical harm to the student or another person.

3. Implementing policies and procedures for suicide and self-harm prevention.

4.  Properly documenting all uses of restraint and effectively reviewing and monitoring those incidents to ensure compliance with Missouri law and District policies.

5.  Providing students with sufficient interventions and supports to address their behavior without resort to the use of restraint, including by developing an appropriate Behavior Intervention Plan, or revising an existing such Plan, based on a Functional Behavioral Assessment any time a student is subjected to a restraint and developing specific plans to address development.

6. Providing students that were secluded and restrained with compensatory educational and counseling services to address physical and mental harm, trauma, and lost educational time.

7. Training staff to comply with the law and meet the needs of the students.

In the alternative, if a resolution is not met, the DOJ states it was prepared to initiate a lawsuit under Title II of the ADA.

This matter is ongoing.