The Law School Admission Council fired back at a California state agency in the latest round of a long-running court fight over disability accommodations for people seeking to take the LSAT.

The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing last fall asked a federal judge to find the council in civil contempt for allegedly violating a 2014 consent decree it reached with the state agency and the U.S. Department of Justice. That agreement included a slate of rules designed to ease the process of obtaining disability accommodations on the LSAT such as extra time and additional breaks.

The council pressured some test takers to accept fewer accommodations than they requested by warning that they might not receive any accommodations if they didn't accept the initial offer, the California department claims in court papers. Additionally, the council reported those modified requests as being “granted in full,” even using white-out on some papers to obscure the fact that the granted accommodations were less than those originally requested, the department alleges.

In the latest court papers, the council argues in a motion of opposition filed on Jan. 12  that it has “substantially complied” with the rules hashed out by the parties after years of litigation and that the multiple layers of review now required are far more burdensome than the accommodation procedures employed by other standardized admission test organizations.

The council argues that the department's motion “seeks to punish a non-profit entity that has already been punished to a degree that finds no parallel” in the Justice Department's enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Moreover, a February 2017 report by an independent monitor found that the council had substantially complied with all the provisions of the consent decree, it says.

There are no grounds to extend that decree for an additional two years or replace the independent monitor as requested by the California department, the council argues in its opposition motion. (The consent decree is set to expire in May.)

Council President Kellye Testy said in an interview Friday that the renewed litigation was unexpected given the monitor's findings of compliance. She pointed to the fact that the Justice Department opted not to participate in the latest court proceeding despite being a party to the initial suit.

“[The Justice Department] could have joined that, but I think they looked at it and didn't see a reason to do it,” Testy said. “We are in compliance with the decree. We're going to continue, postdecree, to try and be not just in compliance but on the leading edge of disability rights.”

The council has offered to meet with attorneys from the California department and open its records to further scrutiny in an effort to reach a resolution out of court, Testy added.

Kevin Kish, director of the California department, provided a statement Friday in response to a request for comment about the latest filings.

“Our goal from the beginning of this litigation has been to ensure that people with disabilities who take the LSAT have the testing accommodations to which they are entitled,” Kish said. “We found what we believe are serious violations of the court's orders. The relief we seek is intended to remedy those violations and hold LSAC to its agreement.”

Meanwhile, a consortium of disability rights groups and law professors filed an amicus brief supporting the motion to find the council in civil contempt for its handling of accommodation requests. Among them are the National Association of Law Students with Disabilities, the American Foundation for the Blind, and the Disability Rights Bar Association.

Much of the California department's civil contempt motion centers on the use of what it calls the “50% email,” which it says is an ultimatum whereby the council automatically offers test takers a lesser accommodation than requested without conducting a full review of their application. If the test taker declines the offer, they are given a short time frame in which to provide supplemental documentation and told they risk being registered for the test without any accommodations.

Testy said that the council has since modified that process, which applied only to a limited number of those seeking accommodation.

The council's policy since the consent decree has been to grant the same accommodations LSAT takers received on other standardized exams, such as the SAT, she said. When test takers ask for accommodations beyond those received earlier, such as triple time instead of time-and-a-half, the council requires additional documentation. Rather than making test takers affirm which option they want to pursue—the lesser accommodations they had on earlier tests or the submission of further documentation to obtain additional accommodations—the council now automatically registers them under the lesser accommodations pending more documentation, Testy said. The change eliminates one step for test takers and makes clear that they won't have to take LSAT without any accommodations, even if they opt to pursue additional ones.

“Once we understood what [the California department] preferred, we were happy to say, 'OK, we'll do it that way,'” Testy said. “It was a small administrative change.”

The council receives about 2,000 accommodation requests annually, the bulk of which claim nonphysical disabilities such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and learning disorders. The LSAT was taken more than 109,000 times last year, a figure that includes repeat takers. Extra time is the most common accommodation sought. The council said in court papers that it has hired extra staff and outside evaluators to comply with the consent decree.

The California department originally sued the council in 2012, alleging its LSAT accommodation procedures were too burdensome and violated the ADA. The Justice Department intervened in the suit, and in 2014 the parties announced a consent decree whereby the council paid $8.7 million to 6,300 people who applied for accommodations between January 2009 and May 2014, and for attorney fees and the state's administrative costs.

The council also agreed to change how it handled test accommodations, most notably ending the practice of alerting law schools to LSAT scores earned by people who received extra time on the exam, a practice known as flagging. The consent decree is two years long and the council has since stopped flagging scores.

But the parties were soon back in court, wrangling over what, precisely, the new procedures should be. A judge in August 2015 signed off on a series of procedures recommended by an expert panel, which included the automatic review by an outside expert when the council denies an accommodations request.

The California department's civil contempt motion alleges that the council failed to maintain proper documentation of accommodation requests and outcomes, and actively sought to obscure some of those records.

“[The council] has violated nearly every major category of the issues addressed in the Best Practices Panel Report as approved by this court and those violations occurred repeatedly on a nationwide basis for two years—nearly the entire time during which [the council] was obligated to implement the Best Practices,” the motion reads. “Dismayingly, the Decree Monitor could and should have spotted the violations but either missed them entirely or ignored them, and instead, without even mentioning these problems, issues a report asserting [the council] was in compliance with the Decree.”

The California department also claims the council denied it access to files marked “granted in full.” The agency sent three attorneys to the council's headquarters in Newton, Pennsylvania, for three days to review its internal documents, according to the civil contempt motion. During that visit they found multiple files where white out had been used to alter the nature of the accommodations test takers sought, it alleges.

Testy countered that the council has been forthcoming with its internal records.

“We don't see any basis for what they're claiming,” she said. “We have opened up our records fully. We have invited them to come look at anything they want to look at. We have no desire to hide anything.”