Rutgers New Jersey Medical School didn’t violate the Americans with Disabilities Act or Rehabilitation Act when it dismissed a student who failed her medical licensing exams, a federal judge in New Jersey has ruled.
To the contrary, “the school took great efforts to accommodate Iris Chin throughout her academic career and was in fact proactive in helping to facilitate her academic success,” U.S. District Judge Jose Linares wrote in tossing out the disability discrimination lawsuit.
The university’s “great efforts” included granting repeated medical leaves of absences and allowing Chin to take the Step-1 exam three times before she passed and to retake the Step-2 exams, which she failed, Linares said. In addition, the associate dean for student affairs met with her dozens of times before the program dropped her.
According to the decision, Chin enrolled at Rutgers in 2004 and began suffering from severe depression and suicidal thoughts due to bipolar disorder during her first year. She ultimately finished the first three years but was dismissed in 2012.
In throwing out the suit, Linares held that Chin failed to show that her request for additional Step-2-related exam waivers in the form of extra study time would have ensured passing the test.
In addition, he said the school demonstrated that the requested accommodations would have fundamentally altered the nature of its programs by substantially weakening its academic standards.
He noted that no other Rutgers medical student had ever been allowed a waiver of all three policies that Chin wanted waived.
