On February 23, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released its findings in a sweeping investigation of the Special School District of St. Louis County (SSD).  DOJ concluded that SSD’s use of seclusion and restraint violated Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, describing “shocking overuse” of these practices and a pattern of discrimination against students with disabilities.

The numbers alone should shock the conscience. Over just two school years, SSD secluded more than 300 students nearly 4,000 times and restrained nearly 150 students 777 times in its own schools serving students with disabilities.  At one school with fewer than 100 students, there were 1,667 seclusions; every single student at that school was either secluded or restrained at least once during the investigative period.  One student was secluded 186 times in a single school year, spending 101 hours, the equivalent of 17 school days, in a seclusion room.

These practices were not measures of last resort used only to prevent the imminent threat of serious physical harm. The DOJ found students locked away for knocking over a teacher’s coffee, refusing to go to music or health class, drawing on a chair, or otherwise exhibiting “disrespectful” or noncompliant behaviors that posed no imminent danger of physical harm to anyone.  Many seclusions lasted for hours, long after any possible safety risk had passed.

We extend our deepest gratitude and appreciation to the dedicated team at the Educational Opportunities Section of the U.S. Department of Justice for their tireless work on this investigation. Their commitment to uncovering the harm and securing meaningful reform has resulted in a landmark settlement agreement that prohibits the use of seclusion and places strict limits on restraint. This effort represents a vital step toward protecting the rights, dignity, and well-being of students with disabilities, not only in St. Louis County but across the nation.

The Impact of Seclusion

In a recent article, “Time to Stop Locking Disabled Children in Boxes,” I wrote about the profound harm caused when schools isolate children in small rooms under the label of “seclusion” or “isolation.”  Seclusion is not a neutral behavioral strategy; it is experienced by children as punishment, abandonment, and terror.

When children are forced into seclusion spaces, they scream, cry, pound on walls, and beg to be released. Some bang their heads or hurt themselves; others urinate or defecate in the room, not as a strategy to get out, but as an involuntary response to extreme fear and loss of control. Adults may peer through a window and insist the child “calm down,” even though telling someone in a survival state to calm down is futile. Eventually, the screams give way to silence. From the outside, this can look like the child is calm. It is not calm; it is shut down. In situations where the human body is stressed and all seems hopeless, we may shift into an autonomic shutdown response. In shutdown, the nervous system moves beyond fight/flight into a collapse state where everything slows or goes “offline” to survive an overwhelming threat. Many children enter states of dissociation in response to the overwhelming stress and trauma.

Survivors describe being locked alone in spaces that feel like closets or cells, listening to the sounds of the hallway on the other side of the door, and wondering if anyone will let them free.  Many later struggle with anxiety, school avoidance, nightmares, and symptoms consistent with trauma following seclusion.  Families tell us about children who once loved school but now panic at the sight of the building, children who regress in toileting or self‑care, and children who begin to see themselves as “bad” or “hopeless” because of how they were treated.

The DOJ findings in St. Louis put real‑world detail to that harm. Investigators documented more than 50 incidents in which students engaged in self‑harm or expressed suicidal thoughts while in seclusion.  In one case, a fourth grader was secluded for over two hours while biting his hands and wrists, saying he wanted to kill himself, and banging his head on his knee.  In another case, a fifth grader tied shoelaces around her neck so tightly that staff had to cut them off.

Students in SSD’s seclusion rooms were also documented hitting themselves, smearing blood on floors and walls, urinating and defecating on themselves and the room, playing in urine or feces, making themselves vomit, and masturbating, all while locked alone with minimal intervention from adults.  DOJ’s expert identified these behaviors as trauma responses, exacerbated by isolation and the denial of basic needs such as toilet access.

Seclusion is not therapeutic; it is deeply traumatizing. It does not teach skills; it teaches fear and helplessness. And it disproportionately targets disabled children, Black and brown children, and children with a trauma history. It impacts our most vurnerable children, whom our systems are legally and morally bound to support.

Dangerous Restraint and Lost Instructional Time

Seclusion at SSD did not occur in isolation; it was paired with heavy reliance on physical restraint, including particularly dangerous supine restraints where children are held face‑up on the ground.  DOJ found that SSD used supine restraint more than 400 times in two years, often as a standard response for certain students and sometimes even when there was no genuine safety threat or when staff had escalated the behavior.

Supine restraint is known to carry a serious risk of asphyxiation and death.  That is why the settlement requires SSD to end the use of supine restraint altogether and to ensure that any other physical restraint is used only when a student’s behavior poses an imminent danger of physical harm.  The agreement also requires SSD to stop using seclusion entirely, develop effective behavioral supports, improve documentation and oversight, and provide compensatory education and counseling to students harmed by these practices.

Beyond immediate physical and psychological harm, DOJ documented that students lost hundreds of hours of instructional time due to seclusion, restraint, shortened school days, and homebound placements imposed in response to behavior.  Some students at SSD were placed on severely reduced schedules or sent home early on a routine basis, without any corresponding increase in supports, essentially being excluded from education because of disability‑related needs that the district failed to address.

Missouri Law

Missouri law already says that seclusion and restraint should be reserved for situations in which there is an “imminent danger of physical harm to self or others,” and that students must be released as soon as that imminent danger ends.  Districts are required to document each incident, notify parents, and review their policies.  SSD’s documented practices show how easily these guardrails can fail when there is no clear, enforceable prohibition on seclusion itself.

Representative Ian Mackey recently introduced House Bill 2183, which is an important step because it acknowledges that seclusion is fundamentally incompatible with safe and supportive schools. Beginning in the 2027–28 school year, the bill would require school districts, charter schools, and publicly contracted private providers to stop using seclusion as a behavior management tool and to update policies to define and prohibit seclusion.  It directs the state to update its model policy so that seclusion, defined as involuntary confinement alone in a room or area where the student is prevented from leaving.

However, as currently drafted, HB 2183 contains a deeply troubling carve‑out: the prohibition on confining students in seclusion rooms does not apply to a special school district established under section 162.825, the very category that includes the Special School District of St. Louis County.  The children who are most likely to be subjected to seclusion, the students with the most significant needs in our special school districts, are the very children who would be left unprotected by this exception.

The DOJ investigation has already shown us what happens when we allow that kind of exception: routine seclusion of almost 40 percent of students in SSD‑operated schools, with one school secluding 91 percent of its students and another restraining one child 372 times.  An exception for special school districts is not a technical detail; it is an invitation for abuse to continue.

What Missouri Should Do

Missouri lawmakers have an opportunity to respond decisively to the DOJ’s findings in St. Louis.  The settlement requires SSD to end seclusion and supine restraint because federal investigators concluded that these practices are unnecessary to protect safety and routinely increase the risk of harm.  That conclusion does not stop at the county line.

Here is what needs to happen:

• Close the special school district loophole: Any statewide prohibition on seclusion must apply to all districts, including special school districts established under section 162.825.  There cannot be one standard for children in neighborhood schools and another for disabled children in separate placements.
• Enact a true statewide ban on seclusion:
Missouri should move beyond limiting seclusion to “imminent danger” and join states that have prohibited seclusion outright, replacing it with evidence‑based de‑escalation, regulation‑supportive environments, and individualized behavioral supports.  
• Prohibit supine and other dangerous restraints:
The settlement’s requirement that SSD end the use of supine restraints should be codified statewide, along with existing bans on techniques that impair breathing, obstruct airways, or restrict communication.
• Invest in real supports instead of crisis responses:
Every time a student experiences a crisis, that data should trigger a review of their Functional Behavioral Assessment and Behavior Intervention Plan, with updated, trauma-informed, individualized supports, not another seclusion or restraint.  
• Invest in staff training: Staff across Missouri need training in trauma-informed, neuroscience-aligned, neurodiversity-affirming, relationship-driven, and collaborative approaches, equipping them with tools beyond restraint and isolation.
• Ensure transparency, oversight, and accountability:
Missouri’s existing requirements for incident reporting, parent notification, and state‑level data collection must be enforced, not treated as paperwork.  Parents should be notified promptly within hours, not months.

Missouri must learn from the DOJ investigation and not pass a bill that leaves the very children harmed in St. Louis SSD exposed to the same practices in the future.  A true response to this wake‑up call means listening to disabled students and their families, acknowledging the trauma that seclusion and dangerous restraint have caused, and choosing a different path.

We know better now. The federal government has told SSD to end seclusion and supine restraint. Survivors and families have told us how deeply these practices harm children.  Representative Mackey has put the issue squarely on the legislative agenda. Let’s amend the bill and pass it.

It is time for Missouri lawmakers to pass legislation that bans seclusion statewide, removes special‑district carve‑outs, and ensures that no child in Missouri is ever again locked alone in a box and left there to suffer.