The Special School District of St. Louis County, which serves students with disabilities across 22 partner districts, announced last week that it will eliminate seclusion rooms and supine restraints starting in the 2026-27 school year. The change applies to all SSD schools, programs, partner districts, and contracted settings, and it follows a U.S. Department of Justice investigation that found the district's practices violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The same legal standards the DOJ applied in Missouri apply to every school district in the country, and the paper trail that ended these practices is one any parent can start.

What the DOJ Found

The Justice Department opened its investigation in May 2024 and reviewed thousands of incident reports from the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years. According to its February findings letter, the district secluded more than 300 students nearly 4,000 times and restrained almost 150 students 777 times over those two years. Supine restraint, in which a student is laid on their back while staff hold down their arms and legs, was used more than 400 times.

The details behind those numbers are what moved federal investigators. At Litzsinger School, which serves fewer than 100 students, every enrolled student was secluded at least once during the investigation window. One student was restrained 372 times, close to 35 hours in total. In one reported incident, a third-grader who had hit himself with a shoe remained in seclusion for more than an hour after the self-injury stopped.

Missouri law has limited seclusion and restraint to situations of imminent danger of physical harm since 2021, when House Bill 432 took effect. The DOJ found the district routinely violated both that law and its own written policies, using these interventions as a regular response to noncompliance and minor behavior rather than a last resort in a genuine crisis.

What Changes This Fall

Beginning with the 2026-27 school year, SSD will phase out its seclusion rooms, the small padded spaces with locked doors and observation windows, and will no longer use supine restraints anywhere in its system. Physical restraint is not disappearing entirely. In a notice to staff, the district said it will be used only when a student's behavior poses an imminent danger of physical harm to the student or someone else, which is the standard Missouri law already required.

Superintendent Michael Maclin said the updates reflect the district's commitment to safe, supportive learning environments. The DOJ's findings letter had warned that failure to remedy the violations could result in a federal lawsuit, and the announcement also follows a suit filed by the family of a 9-year-old boy with autism and ADHD who alleged he was improperly secluded dozens of times.

What This Means Outside Missouri

There is no federal law banning seclusion in schools. The Keeping All Students Safe Act has been introduced in Congress repeatedly without passing, so the rules your child's school follows come from state law and district policy, and they vary widely. What the SSD case establishes is that the ADA itself limits these practices: the DOJ treated routine seclusion and restraint of students with disabilities as discrimination, not as a discipline choice left to local judgment.

Request your district's written restraint and seclusion policy, which is a public document you are entitled to see. Ask three questions of it: what standard triggers restraint or seclusion, how quickly parents are notified after an incident, and where incidents are reported. In Missouri, schools must notify parents promptly and report every incident to the state education department. Many states have similar requirements that go unenforced until a parent asks.

If your child has been restrained or secluded, request the written incident report each time and keep copies. Patterns across reports, the same student, the same room, the same minor triggers, are exactly what built the DOJ's case. Repeated incidents are also a signal that your child's behavior plan is not working, which you can raise through an IEP meeting you request in writing. If the school does not respond, formal dispute resolution options include state complaints, which can trigger the same kind of records review that happened in St. Louis County.

Families in SSD's partner districts should watch for the updated policy language this fall and ask how staff are being retrained, since the district's own history shows that written policy and daily practice can diverge. Wherever you live, save the DOJ's February findings letter and the district's announcement for your advocacy file: a district that secluded students nearly 4,000 times in two years has now concluded it can educate those same students without a seclusion room at all.