American Annals of the Deaf

In 1993, Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District became the second of only two Pub. L. 94-142/Individuals With Disabilities Education Act cases specifically dealing with mainstreamed Deaf¹ students to reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Whereas the first case, Board of Education of Hendrick Hudson Central School District v. Rowley (1982), had dealt with the right to interpreter services in order to access academic instruction, Zobrest centered on whether or not a public school district could provide an interpreter to a student attending a private, religious-based school. The question at issue was whether an interpreter, as a public employee funded by taxpayer monies, was participating in the provision of religious content, thereby violating the Establishment Clause (most commonly known as the principle of separation of church and state) of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Although the lower courts supported the school district on this basis, the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the provision of an interpreter merely provides the Deaf student with access to classroom content. Accordingly, the court argued that there is no financial benefit to the religious institution derived from educating a Deaf student with the use of an interpreter (wherein the public monies are paid to the interpreters themselves rather than to the institution) beyond the tuition fees for that student (paid by the parents).

Disability Rights and Religious Liberty in Education deals primarily with Larry and Sandi Zobrest’s efforts to educate their Deaf son, Jim. They recount Jim Zobrest’s educational journey from a program for children with disabilities in Erie, PA, to a 3-year stay at the Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind (ASDB) before he switched to a public middle school (with an interpreter) on the north side of Tucson. Once Jim reached high school age, the Zobrests chose to place him in Salpointe Catholic High School, also in Tucson, because they felt that the public schools in the area were both dangerous and academically insufficient. The final third of the book describes the legal efforts to secure an interpreter for Jim at Salpointe.

The book’s authors, Bruce J. Dierenfield and David A. Gerber, describe it as an investigation of “the development not only of law addressing disability and education but also the constitutional jurisprudence addressing the relations between church and state” (p. x). In addition, they claim an intent to evaluate “mainstreaming, from [End Page 424] within its goals of normalization,” as well as to explore “the critique of mainstreaming advanced from within the Deaf community, a critique that rejects the premise of normalization” (pp. x–xi). Despite these lofty claims, discussions of Deaf-centric perspectives on mainstreaming get extremely short shrift in the book: Few statements go beyond token mentions. This is perhaps due to the biographies and biases of the authors, one of whom describes himself as both nonsigning and hearing impaired. Indeed, throughout the book there are not-so-subtle biases in favor of Hearing-centered notions over Deaf-centered ideals. In illustration, the word “deaf ” remains uncapitalized (without explanation) throughout almost the entire book, and the authors prefer to use the phrase “hearing impaired” where most in the Deaf community would say “hard of hearing.” Perhaps echoing Sandi Zobrest’s own biases, the authors describe residential schools such as ASDB as a “segregated environment not strongly geared to immersion in the hearing world” (p. 42). Elsewhere, anti-Deaf biases appear in the form of discriminatory attitudes toward Deaf cultural behaviors, which the authors imply are rude and improper in the context of school decorum. In contrast, a Deaf-centric view would posit these behaviors as promoting visual and sensory adaptations to Deaf people’s nonauditorily based lives.

Some positive lessons can be found in the book, however. For example, the description of Jim Zobrest’s parents, especially his mother, Sandi, underscores one of the most consistent findings of research on Deaf students’ educational success (indeed, that of Hearing students as well): the importance...