The Larry P. v. Riles (Larry P.) case was filed in 1971 when five Black children who had been placed in special education classes for the “educable mentally retarded” (EMR) in the San Francisco Unified School District filed suit in the Federal District Court of Northern California arguing they had been wrongly placed in the EMR classes based on their performance on intelligence tests that were racially biased and discriminatory. [1] The suit also challenged the disproportionate rate at which Black students were placed in EMR classes compared to the number of Black students in the school system.
The Court decided in favor of the students, and the district was prohibited from using IQ tests to identify or place Black students in EMR-type classes. The decision was upheld on appeal in 1984.[2] In 1986, following a settlement by the parties after California abolished the EMR category, the Court expanded its ruling by banning the use of IQ testing on any Black students who have been referred for special education services.[3]
In 1994, Crawford v. Honig prompted a reexamination of the rights of Black children in special education. In Crawford, Black students who sought to have IQ tests administered to them for non-EMR learning disabilities challenged the 1986 expansion of the Larry P. ruling, which banned anyuse of IQ tests for Black children in special education. The Court ruled for the students and rescinded the 1986 expansion, allowing three Black children to take IQ tests because their parents wished to have them do so. That decision, which left in place the previous 1976 Larry P. ruling, was affirmed on appeal.[4]
The California Department of Education (CDE)’s most recent legal guidance on this issue clarifies that the “Larry P. injunction remains in place,” and therefore school districts are prohibited from using any assessment that is a “standardized intelligence test” for purposes of identifying or placing Black students in a category or placement that is “substantially equivalent” to what was formerly known as EMR.[5]
As the California Association of School Psychologists has explained, this means that IQ tests may not be used to place Black students in the category of Intellectual Disability (“ID”), but school psychologists may still exercise their professional judgment as to whether to use IQ tests for other suspected areas of disability, so long as they follow all other legal requirements.[6] In practice, school districts sometimes misinterpret Larry P. as preventing them from conducting important and necessary cognitive assessments that are indeed allowed under Larry P. and the CDE’s legal guidance.
If families of Black students with disabilities are concerned about a missed diagnosis or misdiagnosis due to a district’s failure to conduct a needed cognitive assessment because of the district’s misunderstanding of Larry P., they may want to consider seeking an independent education evaluation (IEE). Information about IEEs is available at SERR Ch. 2.27-2.29.
Concerning the special education category of specific learning disability (SLD), the CDE, in its memorandum regarding Larry P.’s injunction, which is explained in this question, no longer directly bans use of IQ tests. Instead, the CDE states if a school district chooses to use the severe discrepancy model in assessing for SLD eligibility, it is not required to use IQ tests to determine intellectual ability.
- Larry P. v. Riles, 495 F. Supp. 926 (N.D. Cal. 1979).[↩]
- Larry P. v. Riles, 793 F.2d 969 (9th Cir. 1984).[↩]
- See Crawford v. Honig, 37 F.3d 485, 486 (9th Cir. 1994).[↩]
- See Crawford, 37 F.3d at 488-89.[↩]
- Cal. Dep’t of Educ., Mem. Re. Special Education Assessment of African American Students (Sept. 14, 2022), available at https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/se/ac/memo091422.asp.[↩]
- See Cal. Assoc. of Sch. Psycs., CASP’s Response to CDE’s Memorandum on Special Education of African American Students – Sept. 14, 2022 (Oct. 10, 2023), available at https://casponline.org/pdfs/resource-papers/Updated%20Larry%20P.%20Guidance%20Paper%2010-10-23.pdf.[↩]