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In connection with a Consent Agreement approved by the Court a three-judge panel of the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the Court enjoined Pennsylvania from denying any child up to age 21 admission to a public school program “appropriate to his learning capacities”, or from having his educational status changed without first being notified of and given the opportunity for a due process hearing.Įxpert testimony in this action indicates that all mentally retarded persons are capable of benefiting from a program of education and training… It is the Commonwealth’s obligation to place each mentally retarded child in a free, public program of education and training appropriate to the child’s capacity. The plaintiffs argued that this exclusion violated their rights under both the Equal Protection clause and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Gilhool, the attorney who represented the Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children (P.A.R.C.), relied on Brown in his class action suit filed on behalf of 14 children with developmental disabilities who had been denied access to public education in Pennsylvania, under a state law that specifically allowed schools to exclude children who had not reached a “mental age of five years” by the time they should be enrolling in first grade. He suggested that the case had enormous possibilities for children with disabilities as well. Gunnar Dybwad called attention to the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. In 1954, early in his tenure as Executive Director of the then-named National Association for Retarded Children, Dr.