According to the lawsuit, our client’s mother enrolled her daughter in the McLean County Unit School District in January 2024. She alleges that she worked with the school district to ensure the school would be a supportive environment for her transgender child. 

The lawsuit states that in January 2024, our client formally signed a document to amend her gender identity, name, and pronouns at a meeting with the school district. According to the lawsuit, the school district assured our client that her gender marker, name, and pronouns would be updated across all district records before her first day of school. 

The next day, according to the lawsuit, our client went to her first day of school and found that her gender marker, name, and pronouns were not updated across all district records as promised. The lawsuit claims that the school district assigned our client a student e-mail address that included her former name (“dead name”).

The lawsuit also alleges that on her first day: 

[Our client’s] teacher asked [her] for her e-mail address so he could add her to his Google Classroom. [Our client], though embarrassed, provided her school-issued e-mail address. [Our client’s] teacher then asked [our client], “Who is [dead name]?” in front of the class. Before class ended, one student told another, “Watch me bully them until they transfer.” After being dead-named in the presence of other students, [Our client’s] classmates started harassing her because of her sex and gender identity. The bullying included verbal harassment, derogatory comments about her gender identity, deliberate misgendering, social exclusion, and threats of physical harm.

According to the lawsuit, although the school district assured our client that her previous gender information would stay private, our client’s teachers repeatedly questioned her and other District staff about our client’s gender identity. 

The lawsuit alleges that our client’s mother then complained to the school district’s Director of Equity and Inclusion about the bullying, threats, and dead-naming incident. The director told our client’s mother that she’d “look into it.” Our client’s mother was allegedly later told by school district leaders, “Middle school girls are mean.” 

Our client’s mother then allegedly learned about a TikTok account in which her daughter’s classmates allegedly used the account to threaten and bully her. The lawsuit states that our client’s mother emailed the school district a screenshot of the TikTok account, but the district allegedly did not take any meaningful action. 

According to the lawsuit, our client’s mother repeatedly told the school district about instances in which our client’s classmates threatened our client. Our client’s mother and her partner then told the school district that our client was afraid to leave her home, ride the school bus, or attend school due to the escalating harassment. But, according to the lawsuit, the district did not take any meaningful action. 

The lawsuit continues:

On March 7, 2024, [our client] was attacked at school by another student (“Student R”). Student R approached [our client] from behind, pulled her hair, and forcefully and repeatedly slammed her head to the ground until [she] lost consciousness. Student R then punched [our client] in the face until someone pulled her off. After this attack, no one, including [school district’s] teachers or staff, helped [our client] or inquired about her well-being. Later, after [our client] began to have trouble seeing, she went to the nurse’s office, where the nurse and [the school’s principal] called [our client’s mother] and informed her that [our client] had been involved in “a fight” and had “hit” her head. [Our client’s mother] did not understand that [our client] had been attacked, rather than involved in a mutual fight, and that [our client’s] head had been forcibly slammed into the ground, rather than merely “hit” – until she requested and reviewed the video footage of the incident.

According to the lawsuit, our client was later diagnosed with a concussion, a potential traumatic brain injury (TBI), and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The lawsuit alleges the trauma has left our client feeling unsafe, severely disrupting her education and overall well-being. 

The lawsuit states that she left traditional school and enrolled in homebound services from April 2024 to October 2025. 

According to the lawsuit:

Prior to the attack and harassment, [our client] had been enrolled in gifted programming since kindergarten and consistently tested in the top one percent of students nationally for her age. As a result of the concussion, potential traumatic brain injury, and PTSD caused by [the school district’s] conduct, [our client] now struggles with academic tasks that were previously well within her abilities. 

The lawsuit alleges that our client has suffered economic damage, pain and suffering, inconvenience, emotional distress, and impairment of her quality of life. According to the lawsuit, the school district’s actions and failures to act show a deliberate indifference and/or malice toward our client’s rights.

This case is ongoing. 

For more information, contact attorney Sarah Jane Hunt at sarahjane@kennedyhuntlaw.com. If you or someone you know has been a victim of discrimination, our skilled attorneys at Kennedy Hunt, P.C. may be able to help you. Fill out a questionnaire so we can understand your claim. 

The post Kennedy Hunt P.C. Files Discrimination Complaint against McLean County Unit No. 5 School District Board of Education appeared first on Kennedy Hunt, P.C..

The default judgment found Pace Transport, Inc. to have violated the Missouri Human Rights Act and Missouri’s Workers’ Compensation Retaliation laws.

Defendant Orlando Pace employed our client from approximately October 2015 to April 2018. The default judgment found that Pace Transport, Inc. terminated our client’s employment due to her sex (female), her disability due to her on-the-job injury, her complaints of sex discrimination during her employment, and the exercise of her rights under Missouri’s workers’ compensation laws. Our client suffered lost wages, emotional distress, and attorneys’ fees.

The Court ordered the payment of lost wages, emotional distress damages, punitive damages, and attorneys’ fees and costs.

For more information, contact attorney Nicole Matlock at nmatlock@kennedyhuntlaw.com. If you or someone you know has been a victim of discrimination, our skilled attorneys at Kennedy Hunt, P.C. may be able to help you. Fill out a questionnaire so we can understand your claim.

The post Major News: Kennedy Hunt P.C. Lands $522K Favorable Default Judgment Against Orlando Pace and Pace Transport, Inc. appeared first on Kennedy Hunt, P.C..

“They’re very controversial,” Kennedy told Fox 2. “The question is, what good do they do? Do the businesses actually make permanent changes that benefit the community or not?”

According to Fox 2, one man in the area has sued more than 70 businesses over the past five years for alleged ADA violations, including missing bathroom signage and doors that are less than the required width. 

The owner of one restaurant told Fox 2 the lawsuits feel “less like an effort to make the community more accessible and more like an opportunistic pattern targeting local businesses.”

Kennedy is further quoted in the article, saying that the ADA requires older buildings to make relatively easy and inexpensive modifications to comply with the law. But he adds that the standards are subjective. 

“You can read the regulations for a long time and never know the answer to that,” he said.

The attorneys at Kennedy Hunt P.C. are experts in the ADA and disability law. If you or someone you know has been a victim of disability discrimination, our skilled attorneys at Kennedy Hunt, P.C. may be able to help you. Fill out a questionnaire so we can understand your claim. 

The post Local News: Founding Attorney Tom Kennedy Quoted in Coverage on ‘Drive-by’ ADA Laws appeared first on Kennedy Hunt, P.C..

Our lawsuit alleges our client, who suffers from autism and attention deficit disorder among other diagnoses, did not receive reasonable accommodations for his disabilities while he was in the Department of Youth Services’ custody. The lawsuit argues that the Department of Youth Services should be considered a place of accommodation and, thus, subject to the Missouri Human Rights Act.  

Messenger writes: 

“Hunt is alleging discrimination under the federal Americans With Disabilities Act as well as the Missouri Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in places of public accommodation, like schools. That’s where this lawsuit becomes really important. The state is arguing that DYS facilities are prisons, not schools — directly contradicting the famed ‘Missouri Model.’”

“It goes against everything [DYS says] anywhere else,” managing partner Sarah Jane Hunt told Messenger. “I don’t think that’s what Missourians want. I don’t think that’s what the Legislature intended.”

Messenger also writes: 

“If the state’s argument is successful, it could have devastating consequences for young people in the care of DYS. They would have no recourse under the law to force the state to care for their disabilities. According to DYS, more than 50 percent of the young people in its custody have had some mental health issues, and about a third have been diagnosed with learning disabilities.

Hunt told Messenger she believes DYS is already not caring for the disabilities of the young people in their custody.  “They’re just not providing services to kids who need it,” Hunt told Messenger.

More details on the case are available here. For more information, contact attorney Sarah Jane Hunt at sarahjane@kennedyhuntlaw.com. If you or someone you know has had their educational and/or disability rights violated, the skilled attorneys at Kennedy Hunt, P.C. may be able to help you. Fill out a questionnaire so we can understand your claim. 

The post News Coverage: Has state abandoned ‘Missouri Model’ of juvenile justice? Lawsuit says yes. appeared first on Kennedy Hunt, P.C..

Sarah Jane Hunt, managing partner at Kennedy Hunt P.C., is an award-winning attorney who focuses her practice on civil rights, employment and special education disputes. She has extensive experience representing individuals, sober homes, and disability rights agencies in federal and state court. Sarah Jane is the lead attorney on the lawsuit.

Susie Lake, attorney at the MacArthur Justice Center’s Missouri office, is an expert in juvenile and education justice issues. She spent years litigating these issues at Legal Services of Eastern Missouri. Additionally, she continued this work while at the ACLU of Washington through amicus briefs and investigatory work.

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