The Connecticut Department of Justice is investigating the Quinnipiac University physician assistant program’s adherence to federal disability laws.

John Morgan, Quinnipiac’s associate vice president for public relations, confirmed the inquiry’s existence in a Nov. 14 statement to The Chronicle.

“We are cooperating with the DOJ’s investigation into the university’s compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act as it pertains to students in the physician assistant program,” Morgan wrote.

It is not immediately clear when the Justice Department opened the investigation.

However, the civil rights inquiry is only the latest in a series of challenges facing Quinnipiac’s physician assistant program.

The program will be on accreditation probation through 2025 after the national accrediting body determined in September that it failed to meet almost 25% of the body’s standards.

Sixteen months earlier, former physician assistant student Alexandra Faulkner filed a lawsuit accusing Quinnipiac of, among other things, violating the ADA.

The parties “mutually resolved” the case in October 2023, Morgan said.

Faulkner alleged in the April 2022 complaint that Quinnipiac officials failed to accommodate her documented mental health disability, mishandled her discrimination allegations and unfairly dismissed her from the program in part because of her disability. She also alleged that program instructors discriminated against her Ukrainian nationality.

The suit further claimed that university administrators regarded the physician assistant program as “notoriously difficult to work with when it came to accommodating students’ disabilities and accommodation requests.”

Several former physician assistant students came forward in the weeks after Faulkner filed the suit to corroborate her allegations of mental health discrimination, calling the program’s environment “unsupportive,” “militaristic,” “toxic” and “cutthroat.”

In response to Faulkner’s lawsuit, a group of current and former physician assistant students penned a letter to the Connecticut DOJ urging it to investigate the program’s adherence to federal disability laws.

The letter, published on May 13, 2022, accused program administrators of disregarding “the recommendations of qualified experts or providers” in favor of giving students with disabilities “the minimum standard accommodations that they feel are ‘reasonable.’”

The letter furthermore claimed the program “punishes students with disabilities by placing them on probation, suspension or dismissal instead of seeking ways on how to better support them.”

“The discriminatory treatment, including the culture of mental health stigma created by the PA faculty, has been a destructive force for these students and their families,” the letter said. “We ask that your department investigate these claims and hold QU and the PA faculty accountable and responsible for any actions that you deem harmful and illegal to students, past and present.”

Faulkner was the third student since 2012 to accuse Quinnipiac of violating the ADA.

In a 2021 lawsuit, former nurse anesthesia student Derrick Sutton claimed the university failed to provide reasonable accommodations for his disability.

Nine years earlier, the DOJ opened an inquiry into Quinnipiac’s ADA compliance after university officials removed a student who sought on-campus mental health counseling.

Quinnipiac officials reportedly sent the student to the emergency room with a letter stating she could not return to campus without prior clearance from a university psychiatrist. The university refused to refund her tuition after removing her.

The university reached a settlement with the student in late 2014, paying out $17,000 for emotional damages and another $15,000 to pay off her student loan. However, the DOJ found that Quinnipiac’s failure to consider modifying its mandatory medical leave policy violated the ADA.

Quinnipiac subsequently created a non-discrimination clause to address its commitment to “providing equal educational opportunities and full participation for students with disabilities.”

“No qualified student will be excluded from participation in any university program or be subject to any form of discrimination based on disability,” the statement reads, in part.

Reiterating this commitment, Morgan said Quinnipiac strives to create “a learning environment that meets the needs of our diverse student body.”

“Any student experiencing any barriers to learning in any program is encouraged to contact the Office of Student Accessibility by emailing [email protected] or calling 203-582-7600,” he wrote.