A new opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court released Tuesday is being hailed as a win for students with disabilities, and it could open the door to litigation previously unseen against school systems who fail to provide for those students. 

“In proceedings below, the courts held that [federal law] precluded [Miguel] Perez’s Americans with Disabilities Act lawsuit,” wrote Justice Neil Gorsuch, siding with a deaf child who was denied access to an American Sign Language interpreter for years, an alleged violation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. A District Court denied Pereze’s ADA claim, seeking monetary damages for his loss, as the IDEA Act precludes such rewards. And a Circuit court upheld that ruling finding he’d failed to exhaust the administrative process before filing the additional ADA claim.