Two new lawsuits allege that D.C. fails to provide special education services to students incarcerated in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, violating federal law and denying students their right to education.

“These students are being systematically stripped of an appropriate education because they are housed in BOP [Bureau of Prisons] facilities, and the District disclaims any responsibility for them,” reads a statement from the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, the group filing the lawsuits on behalf of two anonymous students in BOP facilities. The legal advocacy group School Justice Project and the law firm Nixon Peabody are also representing the students, alongside the Washington Lawyers’ Committee.

D.C. Public Schools and the Office of the State Superintendent are both named as defendants in the cases. Spokespeople for both offices did not immediately return DCist/WAMU’s request for comment on Thursday morning.

Unlike the 50 states, D.C. does not have its own prison. (The city’s old prison, which closed in 2001, was located in Lorton, Virginia.) For more than two decades, D.C. has sent people convicted of crimes — regardless of whether their offense was federal or local — to federal facilities across the country within the Bureau of Prisons. This means a D.C. resident, convicted of a local offense, could spend time in a facility hundreds of miles away from the District. The lawsuit, filed this week, is the latest in a series of lawsuits and complaints against the city’s system of sending its incarcerated residents to federal facilities states away from their home. In February 2022, the Public Defender Service for D.C. filed a class action suit alleging that people from D.C. are treated unfairly in the BOP.

Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), BOP facilities are required to provide D.C. students (through the semester in which they would turn 22) with special education services in accordance with their individualized education programs, or IEPs. This requirement was further affirmed in a 2018 ruling, Brown v. District of Columbia. But the two complaints allege that D.C. students sent to federal prisons have been continually deprived the federally mandated special education programs since the city began sending residents to BOP facilities in 2001.

“Despite these statutory obligations, Petitioner has not received any special education, related services, or transition services in accordance with his Individualized Education Program, since his entrance into the BOP,” reads the complaint regarding one of the two students, who has been in a BOP facility since 2019.

The suit goes on to state that the student has not earned any credits toward his high school diploma, and will return home to D.C. having lost around four years of special education instruction. By the time he returns, the suit continues, he will no longer be eligible for special education programs, having aged out of the system — “while languishing in a BOP facility without any ability to exercise his rights.” The second complaint regards a student who prior to being placed in a BOP prison, was on a track to graduate with a high school diploma. The student allegedly did not receive any special education after he was transferred to a BOP facility (the facility’s name is redacted in the suit) and earned no credits toward his diploma. He will also, when he returns to D.C., have aged out of special education services, the suit claims.

According to the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, only 40% of students in D.C. with special education needs graduate from high school, a rate that drops to 30% for students aged 18-22. Incarceration only further serves as another barrier to these students who face low graduation rates, especially when they are left without a specialized plan to fit their needs.

Special education services are also not just about securing a diploma, according to Sarah Comeau with the School Justice Project. Individualized plans are essential to helping students develop other skills, and map out their future.

“You have counseling, you have trauma support, you have occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, you have post secondary planning, an opportunity to actually assess what post secondary life looks like. You can look into independent living, you can try to figure out. All of that is provided under the law” Sarah Comeau, the co-founder of School Justice Project, said in an interview Thursday.

Maggie Hart, a lawyer with the Washington Lawyers’ Committee, says the denial of special education to students in the BOP is another example among many of the ways in which sending residents to facilities miles from their home has sprawling and life-long consequences. While someone serving, for example, in a New Hampshire state prison on a state offense may stay connected to an education program while incarcerated, D.C. residents sent to BOP facilities are far away from the city’s services. Then upon release, they’re meant to travel miles and miles with little support, and navigate re-entry services in a city separate from where they served.

“I’m having a hard time articulating how profoundly impacted people are, and certainly they’re not getting the education they need,” Hart says. “It’s is a disconnect from family, and from their community.”

This story has been corrected to reflect that the Public Defender Service for D.C. filed a class action suit in February 2022.