Ruling defeat for handicapped

Press, 13 June 1979, Page 8

Ruling defeat for handicapped

NZPA-Reuter Washington A unanimous United States Supreme Court has ruled that handicapped people have no legal right to attend a school if they cannot meet the school’s physical qualifications. In a stunning defeat for handicapped people the justices ruled that a 1973 law designed to end bias against the handicapped does not force colleges and universities to offer “affirmative relief” for such people. The decision reversed a lower court’s ruling that South-Eastern Community

College in Whiteville, North Carolina, had violated Federal law when it refused Frances Davis entry to its nursing programme. “Nothing in the language or history of (the Rehabilitation Act of 1973) reflects an intention to limit the freedom of an educational institution to require reasonable physical qualifications for admission to a clinical training programme,” Justice Lewis Powell said. “Nor has there been any showing in this case that any action short of a substantial change in South-

Eastern’s programme would render unreasonable the qualifications it imposed,” he said. One section of the 1973 law prohibits programmes or activities receiving Federal aid from discriminating against any “otherwise qualified handicapped individual.” The Supreme Court ruling found that Mrs Davis, who is deaf, was not qualified for the nursing programme solely because of her physical handicap. Mrs Davis, aged 46, a licensed practical nurse for the last 12 years, sought in 1974 to join

South-Eastern’s associate nursing programme leading to licensing as a registered nurse. Unlike a practical nurse, a registered nurse is allowed to perform some sophisticated medical tasks. There was never any question that Mrs Davis, a Fairmont, North Carolina resident who had been an undergraduate student at South-Eastern d .ng the 1973-74 school year, was academically qualified for admission to the nursing programme.