Creighton University Appeals Order Favoring Deaf Student

OMAHA, Neb. ― Creighton University is appealing a federal judge’s ruling requiring it to provide a deaf student with special equipment and interpreters to allow him to finish his last two years of medical school.

U.S. District Judge Laurie Smith Camp ruled in December that Creighton University’s medical school must accommodate Michael Argenyi’s disability. Last month, the judge ordered the Omaha university to pay nearly $500,000 in Argenyi’s legal fees.

Late Friday, an attorney for the private Jesuit college filed notice of the school’s appeal.

Argenyi was accepted to Creighton’s medical school in 2008 after disclosing that he was hearing-impaired and requesting accommodations for his disability to allow him to follow lectures and communicate with patients.

But Creighton’s medical school refused to provide Argenyi with a system that transcribes spoken words into text on a computer screen and a cued speech interpreter that Argenyi had used as an undergraduate student, earning a 3.87 GPA.

Instead, Creighton used a microphone system that emitted frequencies to be picked up by Argenyi’s cochlear implants. Argenyi said the system was inadequate, and one doctor determined it actually reduced Argenyi’s ability to understand his professors.

Argenyi took out more than $110,000 in loans to pay for the assistance himself, but said he was forced to take a leave of absence in his third year when the university refused to allow him to have an interpreter to interact with clinical patients — even if he paid for it himself.