Reasonable accommodation in schools in S. v. the Czech Republic: How the ECtHR’s position on the CRPD has become untenable

Abstract

In the case of S. v. the Czech Republic, a child with autism spectrum disorder requested his school to provide reasonable accommodations, which were provided after a delay. In the subsequent court case on this issue, the child’s request to be heard was denied. Twice the absence of a medical report lay at the root of the issue. The Court, however, found no fault with the requirement of a medical attestation before any type of reasonable accommodation could be set up. The case’s outcome did not come as a surprise to anyone who has been following the Court’s case law on inclusive education and reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities.

This post analyses the judgment in the context of earlier cases and argues that the Court’s approach is permeated by the medical model of disability, despite the applicants’ clear argumentation in favour of the social model of disability. This makes the Court’s stance that it interprets the Convention “so far as possible in harmony with other rules of international law of which it forms part” and that it “takes into account the provisions on the rights of persons with disabilities laid down in the CRPD” (§39) increasingly untenable.