Every law student with a disability faces a quiet calculation: whether asking for help the law guarantees is worth what it might cost. The ADA promises equal access, but it only works for students willing to come forward, and a surprising number decide not to.

On June 10th, 2026, The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal published The Law School Accommodations Racket: Accommodations are running amok in elite law schools by Andrew Testerman.[1] In it, Testerman accuses students with documented disabilities of “fraud,” dismisses their diagnoses, and concludes that “the ADA has become a tool of the affluent classes for the perpetuation of their own power and privilege.”[2] It is tempting to treat this kind of essay as a fringe provocation, the sort of thing disabled law students can ignore. But that misreads what the essay is: not an outlier, but a data point. Research by the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) shows that nearly half of disabled law students choose not to disclose their disability anywhere on their applications, and that the students least likely to disclose are the ones applying to the most selective schools, the same students that Testerman is writing about. The accommodations he attacks are exactly what the law contemplates. The real failure lies elsewhere, in the stigma that follows accommodation, which the ADA does not reach.

1. The Legal Framework

Two federal statutes govern law school accommodations: Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, binding schools that receive federal funds, and Titles II and III of the ADA, binding public and private schools respectively. [3]  Both protect students with a “disability,” defined as “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities of such individual.”[4] Since the ADA Amendments in 2008, this definition must be construed broadly.[5] These protected students, however, must be “otherwise qualified,” meaning they are able to meet the program’s essential requirements with or without reasonable accommodation.[6] For those students, the statutes’ core obligation is the provision of reasonable accommodations that give them equal access to the program.[7] 

What is reasonable depends on an individualized inquiry into the student’s disability and the program’s requirements.[8] A school may refuse a modification if it would fundamentally alter the nature of the program or impose an undue burden.[9] A school does not need to waive an essential academic standard, but it must consider whether an alternative would let the student meet that standard.[10] Courts generally defer to a school’s academic judgment, so long as the school has considered available alternatives and reached a rationally justifiable conclusion.[11]

All these protections, however, depend on disclosure. A school’s duty to accommodate generally arises only when it knows of the disability, and the student requests accommodation.[12] Courts have rejected claims against schools that were never put on notice.[13] Schools may also require reasonable documentation from a qualified clinician to support the request.[14] At the same time, Section 504’s regulations generally prohibit schools from asking applicants about disabilities before admission and permit post-admission inquiries only on a confidential basis.[15] The result is a framework that is protective on paper but reaches only students who choose to come forward, and it places the timing and risk of that choice entirely on them.

2. The Accommodations Testerman Attacks Are Exactly What the Framework Contemplates

The accommodation Testerman objects to, extended exam times and reduced-distraction rooms for students with ADHD and similar conditions, are not loopholes in the ADA. They are the ADA working as designed.

The fundamental-alteration defense is the doctrine’s built-in limit on what schools must provide. Rooted in Southeastern Community College v. Davis, it allows a school to refuse any modification that would change the essential nature of its program[16]. In PGA Tour, Inc. v. Martin, the Supreme Court explained that a modification can be a fundamental alteration either by changing an essential aspect of the activity itself or by giving the disabled participant an advantage.[17] The accommodations survive both tests. A law school exam tests whether a student can spot issues, state the governing rules, and apply them to facts. Extended time does not change the questions, lower the grading standard, or place the student on a different curve. The accommodated student sits the same exam, is graded against the same rubric, and is ranked against the same peers. The accommodation changes how a student demonstrates competence, not what competence is required.

3. Discrimination After Accommodation

The deeper problem is structural, not just doctrinal. In “Accommodation Discrimination,” Katherine Macfarlane argues the ADA’s failure-to-accommodate framework protects disabled people against denial of accommodations but has no mechanism at all for the discrimination that follows, the “special treatment” narrative, the suspicion of exaggeration, or the social cost of being marked as accommodated.[18] The law treats a granted accommodation as proof that the system works. For the student who receives one, it is often where a new set of costs begins.[19]

Testerman’s essay voices a narrative that is a recurring feature of academic life. Macfarlane documents faculty asking students with extended time whether they are trying to “game the system,” professors dismissing mental health accommodations as “special snowflake” requests, and a Michigan law student complaining on a public listserv that classmates using “extra” time were hurting the curve.[20] The suspicion attaches easily because disability bias presumes that disabled people are “takers,” and disclosure for accommodation is by definition a request for resources.[21] 

The cost of that suspicion is paid at the moment of disclosure. Macfarlane concludes that for many eligible students a granted request is a “Pyrrhic victory,” and recounts keeping her own law school accommodations secret for fear her grades would be attributed to an unfair advantage.[22] The fraud narrative operates in precisely the space the ADA leaves unregulated, reattaching the costs the statute was meant to remove, and it falls hardest on students still deciding whether to ask at all.

4. Stigma Shapes Student Behavior

This stigma does not merely exist in the abstract; it dramatically shapes how law students behave before they ever set foot in a classroom. LSAC’s 2024 matriculant data showed less than half of disabled 1Ls disclosed on every application, and nearly half of those who did not disclose said they feared being “defined” by their disability.[23]  Disclosure rates track school selectivity almost linearly; the more competitive the school, the less likely a student is to disclose anywhere before enrolling.[24] The burden is not evenly shared, either. LSAC’s data also shows that racially and ethnically marginalized students disclose their disability to no school at meaningfully higher rates than their white peers.[25]

5. Conclusion

The ADA was built on the premise that access is secured once an accommodation is granted. But a right that depends on disclosure is only as strong as students’ willingness to disclose. The ADA can tell a school what it must provide; what it cannot do is protect students from the suspicion that follows them: the assumption that their needs are exaggerated, that their success is unearned, and that accommodation is a form of advantage. That suspicion deters students before they ever ask, and it deters most among those who already face the steepest barriers to entry. Closing that gap will not come from the statute alone. It requires schools, faculty, students, and the profession to treat the stigma surrounding accommodation as a barrier to access, and to address it with the same seriousness the law already gives to the denial of accommodations themselves.