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SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — An Illinois appeals court has agreed to allow a central Illinois student to keep his autism helper dog in school.
The Fourth District Appellate Court sided with the family of Kaleb Drew (pictured). They had argued that the boy's yellow Labrador retriever is a service animal allowed in schools under state law.
The boy's mother had testified that the dog prevents the boy from running away, helps him focus on his homework and calms him when he has a tantrum.
The appeals court upheld the November decision of a Douglas County judge. The court issued its opinion August 24.
The Villa Grove school district had opposed the dog's presence and argued that it isn't a true service animal. A telephone message for the school district's attorney was not immediately returned.
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From The AP:
