A pending lawsuit claims a New Haven Catholic school allegedly disciplined a 13-year-old boy who was diagnosed with Tourette syndrome because the school thought he was purposely showing physical and verbal tics in class.

The lawsuit—which was served on the St. Bernadette Catholic School on Tuesday and will be filed in New Haven Superior Court within the week—claims teachers told the boy to stop making noises when the periodic tics would appear.

As punishment, teachers sent the child numerous times to sit outside the principal's office, according to Jamie Sullivan, attorney for Kimberly Coppola, the boy's mother.

Coppola took her son out of the school to be home-schooled a few weeks ago, said Sullivan, managing partner at Howard, Kohn, Sprague & Fitzgerald in Hartford. Her son was set to graduate eighth grade this year.

“The teachers would berate him in public and would send him to the principal's office for exhibiting the tics,” Sullivan said Wednesday. “The tics are involuntary, but they'd tell him he could control them. They were completely oblivious to the true nature of Tourette syndrome. The school completely quit on him and ignored the recommendations of an expert in the area of Tourette.”

Yale Child Study Center diagnosed the boy on Dec. 12, 2017, with Tourette, a nervous system disorder that causes repetitive involuntary movements and sounds.

Dr. Sherin Stahl made several recommendations to school staff on how to address the tics, according to Coppola's lawyer. Stahl also offered to go to the school and work with staff, and said the student should not have been disciplined for the tics. She explained to school officials that the tics were involuntary.

But in the years the boy attended St. Bernadette, teachers sent him to sit outside the principal's office on “dozens of occasions” in both seventh and eighth grade, according to Sullivan.

“He'd sit at this small desk like a second-grader,” Sullivan said. “It was outside the principal's office and it was very embarrassing.”

Sullivan said the boy fell behind academically because of his frequent stints outside the principal's office.

“He had previously been a straight-A student,” Sullivan said.

St. Bernadette's principal, Edward Goad, and Maria Zone, director of communications for the Hartford Archdiocese, which runs the school, did not respond to a request for comment.

Experts in special education law expressed surprise at how the school allegedly dealt with the matter.

“What often ends up happening is schools will decide whether or not they can … meet the needs of your son or daughter, rather than disciplining them as apparently happened here,” said attorney Lawrence Berliner of Westport. “Many times parents [of students in parochial school or private prep schools] will go back to their local public school district and try to get with special education services from the school district.”

“Some parochial schools will try to do the right thing, but will only go so far with their resources,” added Berliner, who specializes in special education and disability law.

But some schools aren't bound by the rules that govern their public counterparts.

“A lot of the federal rights laws exempt religious institutions, unless they are the recipients of federal grants,” Berliner said.

For instance, these institutions are exempt from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act, but It's not clear if St. Bernadette receives federal grants.

The pending suit seeks punitive damages.

Sullivan said Kimberly Coppola hopes to enroll her son in the ninth grade in the Hamden public school district later this year.