Princeton University. Photo: EQRoy/Shutterstock.com

Princeton University is ending its five-year legal battle with a student who brought a disability accommodation suit against the school after he was banned from campus over a suicide attempt.

U.S. District Judge Peter Sheridan of the District of New Jersey terminated the case in a June 11 order after receiving notice from the parties that a settlement had been reached. The agreement brings an end to a suit that claimed the university failed to accommodate the plaintiff's disability and discriminated against him by imposing conditions on his return that were tougher than those placed on students who leave for a physical illness.

Sheridan's order directs the parties to file papers within 60 days to dismiss the case, or to request that it be reopened if the settlement is not consummated. No settlement terms have been made public in the suit, which came to be viewed as a bellwether case on how colleges should respond to students' suicide attempts.

The case is “close to settling” but the agreement “is not finalized,” said Mary Ciccone of Disability Rights New Jersey, who represents the plaintiff, known as W.P.

William Maderer of Saiber in Florham Park, who represents Princeton, said the parties have reached “an agreement in principle,” which the parties were reducing to writing. He declined to discuss details of the settlement and said its terms would not be disclosed publicly.

W.P. was a first-year student at Princeton in 2012 when he took an overdose of antidepressant pills. While he was recovering, Princeton notified W.P. that he could not return to his dorm room, could not attend class and was banned from campus.

W.P. sought to return to school after the suicide attempt while receiving outpatient mental health counseling, but was denied permission from Princeton, the suit claimed. His request to live off-campus and carry a part-time academic schedule while undergoing intensive therapy was also denied.

W.P. claimed that he was pressed to withdraw from school after the suicide attempt. He returned to campus after taking a year off and complying with the university's requirements, including attendance at weekly psychotherapy sessions and completion of a psychological evaluation.

The suit prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to conduct a review of Princeton's compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act. The DOJ and Princeton reached an agreement in 2016 calling for the university to take certain steps to strengthen its compliance with the ADA, including revising its policies to explicitly describe types of accommodations that students may request. Princeton also had to provide annual training on the ADA, with a focus on mental health discrimination, to faculty and staff responsible for evaluating students' requests for accommodations. The Justice Department did not find any instances of noncompliance with the ADA.

It's unlikely that a court would have found the school in violation of the ADA if the Justice Department had not, said Brett Sokolow, president of the NCHERM Group in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, a law firm formerly known as the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management. At the same time, Princeton lost is motion to dismiss ADA claims in the W.P. case, which typically leads to a settlement.

“I think the tea leaves are all over the place. My best guess is this would not have resulted in liability for Princeton, at least on the ADA,” said Sokolow, who added that the school also faced claims for violation of privacy.

Sokolow said that a settlement in the Princeton case won't be instructive to other institutions facing similar claims. He said that many other colleges and universities are facing litigation concerning students and mental health, but his law firm doesn't hear a lot of inquiries from clients on that subject.

“I don't think a settlement tells us a whole lot, except that the parties want this to go away,” Sokolow said.