Stebbins v. University of Arkansas

David Stebbins (plaintiff) was a student at the University of Arkansas (university) (defendant). Stebbins lived with Asperger’s syndrome and requested an accommodation to help negotiate what he called his tactlessness with professors. During the fall of 2007, Stebbins had several difficult interactions with university staff. For example, Stebbins often became enraged over what others perceived as minor incidents. When the university’s health center had to reschedule Stebbins’s appointment to renew his prescriptions because Stebbins was late to the appointment, Stebbins said that if he did not get his medications refilled, there could be another Virginia Tech incident, referring to a mass shooting that had occurred at another university, killing a large number of people, only months earlier. According to a university official, this was not an isolated comment. In December 2007, the university banned Stebbins from its campus. Several years later, Stebbins sought to re-enroll at the university. During that process, Stebbins sent a profane and malicious email to the university’s chancellor, although the only express threat in the email was to sue the university. The university denied Stebbins’s request to re-enroll. Stebbins sued the university for violating § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act by failing to accommodate his disability. The parties completed a bench trial in the district court.