Supreme Court sides for student with disability, GM faces lawsuit: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: The Supreme Court sided unanimously for a student with disability in a case that could give parents more leverage as they negotiate for their children's education.

USA TODAY Congress Reporter Candy Woodall looks at House Republicans' priorities amid budget negotiations. Plus, General Motors faces a class action lawsuit, USA TODAY Education Reporter Chris Quintana looks at the GI Bill and for-profit colleges, and video shows that multiple people pressed Irvo Otieno before his death.

Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here.

Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Wednesday, the 22nd of March 2023. Today, what a Supreme Court decision might mean for parents of kids with disabilities. Plus, House Republicans scramble for a budget, and we look at how for-profit colleges use the GI Bill.

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The Supreme Court sided unanimously yesterday with a student who is deaf and who sought to sue his school for damages over lapses in his education. Central to the case was Miguel Perez. He enrolled in a Michigan school district when he was nine and got As and Bs on report cards for more than a decade. But months before graduation, his parents learned he would not receive a diploma and that aides assigned to him did not know sign language. At issue was whether students may sue a school for damages under the American Disabilities Act if they haven't already exhausted the administrative process required by another federal law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. In a unanimous decision, the high court ruled that Perez did not need to exhaust IDEA requirements before filing for damages under the ADA. Experts say the case could give parents more leverage as they negotiate with schools for their children's education. For more, you can go back and hear USA TODAY'S Supreme Court Correspondent John Fritze's explanation of the case in this past Saturday's episode of 5 Things.

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House Republicans face an April deadline to figure out a budget. But as USA TODAY Congress Reporter Candy Woodall told me, they've got a long way to go. Candy, thanks for hopping back on the show.

Candy Woodall:

Thank you for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So House Republicans have this looming deadline to figure out a budget. What does the GOP want to cut?

Candy Woodall:

They want to cut a range of things really. They want to cut spending to the FBI, to the ATF. The White House is now coming out and trying to pivot the argument Republicans were making in the midterms that Democrats were soft on crime to now say that Republicans are actually trying to define law enforcement with their budget. But I think it's important to note that there's not really a budget yet. So it's unclear what Republicans want to cut. What the White House is referring to and what I just referred to is a budget proposal put forth by the House Freedom Caucus. This is a conservative flank of the Republican Party. President Joe Biden referred to it as a "five-alarm fire." We're waiting, though, on a proposal that would come through the House Budget Committee, that would go through the appropriations process, that could be supported and voted on by 218 members of the House. They aren't there yet. It looks like on the calendar that there's a lot of time still between now and April 15th, but if you look at the days Congress is actually in session, there are only about seven days.

Taylor Wilson:

And, Candy, how much bipartisan cooperation are you expecting on this next budget?

Candy Woodall:

The two parties are far apart on these issues. Republicans want to make cuts. They are pushing for expending cuts in exchange to raise the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling is intertwined with all of this. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has been taking extraordinary measures to pay the government's bills since January when the United States hit the debt limit. She has said, and this has been supported by the Congressional Budget Office, that the government could default and run out of money to pay its bills this summer if the debt ceiling is not raised. Republicans have said they would not pass a clean debt ceiling, but they've also said they're not going to default on the nation's debt.

Taylor Wilson:

So Republicans are questioning Biden cabinet secretaries in committee this week. What are they trying to learn?

Candy Woodall:

There will be nine cabinet secretaries before House Republicans this week to answer questions. They get grilled in these sessions. They want to know things like how is the president going to fund some of the increases he wants?

Taylor Wilson:

So obviously, Candy, former President Donald Trump has been back in the news this week surrounding his possible indictment. What impact is that having, if any, on House GOP budget discussions and how much of a cloud is this putting over the House GOP in general right now?

Candy Woodall:

The Trump situation is having a huge impact on things. The House Republicans are in Orlando right now. They're having a retreat. This was supposed to be a retreat to focus on policy strategy, and instead it's turned into Republicans having to answer questions from reporters about Trump's comments early Saturday morning in which he said he would be indicted on Tuesday, which did not happen. But Republicans do believe that this Manhattan case against Trump is politically motivated. The whole spectre of it has just completely overshadowed the work Republicans were going to be doing in Orlando on the budget, on strategy for the rest of the 118th Congress.

Taylor Wilson:

USA TODAY Congress Reporter Candy Woodall. Thanks so much.

Candy Woodall:

Thank you.

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Taylor Wilson:

The class action lawsuit involving 39 plaintiffs across 26 states accuses General Motors of knowingly selling cars with faulty transmissions. The suit states that the transmissions lurch and stutter when driving, creating a safety hazard. The case's court-appointed lead counsel, Ted Leopold, said the company knowingly sold more than 800,000 8-speed transmission vehicles, which they knew to be defective. Plaintiffs are seeking either compensation for alleged overpayment at the point of sale or recovery of the cost of replacing faulty components, or their entire transmissions.

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Multiple people pinned Irvo Otieno to the floor of a Virginia hospital's admissions unit before the 28-year-old Black man died on March 6th, according to new footage. The video is at the center of a second degree murder case that was presented to a grand jury yesterday. Seven sheriff's deputies and three hospital employees were named suspects in his death and a Dinwiddie County, Virginia grand jury signed off on second degree murder charges for all 10 people. Otieno died days after he was identified as a potential suspect in a possible burglary. He was taken to the hospital under an emergency custody order and later arrested and charged with assault on a law enforcement officer, disorderly conduct in a hospital, and vandalism. Civil Rights Attorney Benjamin Crump likened the way Otieno died to the 2020 police killing of George Floyd.

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The GI Bill is meant to help veterans and their families get a college education, but some of its biggest recipients are for-profit colleges. I spoke with USA TODAY Investigative Reporter Chris Quintana to learn more. Chris, welcome to 5 Things.

Chris Quintana:

Thank you so much for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So what do critics say about some of these for-profit colleges that receive funds from the GI Bill?

Chris Quintana:

For-profit colleges, veteran advocates say, have made a specific effort to recruit veterans for the GI Bill. It's a table form of funding and they can spend a lot of money on targeting veterans specifically. The University of Phoenix in particular has gotten in trouble for sidestepping some of the rules around appealing to veterans on military bases. They've settled with the Federal Trade Commission over deceptive advertisements. More broadly, advocates just say that some of these schools don't provide a quality education. They're more interested in enrolling folks rather than making sure that they make it to the finish line. Obviously, institutions are not a monolith. The universities themselves will say they provide flexible classes and they make it easy for people to take courses when traditional schools don't necessarily do that.

Taylor Wilson:

You touched on this a bit, but what do veterans say about their experiences with some of these programs?

Chris Quintana:

Some really appreciate the flexible classes and some really benefit from the focus on career training aspects of these colleges. They are focused on education that leads to a job and they really like the fact that they can take these classes while they're taking care of their families or while they're going to work part-time or full-time. But at the same time, we talked with a veterans advocacy group called Veterans Education Success, and they've talked with veterans who kind of have the opposite experience where they couldn't get a job with the degree they had and they actually track complaints based on a bunch of different schools. So they have them for like the University of Phoenix or schools from the Perdoceo Education Corporation, DeVry University as well, which are some of the top recipients of the GI Bill.

Taylor Wilson:

Chris, we've talked a lot about some of these for-profit colleges. Why is it so hard to track in general which colleges receive GI Bill funding?

Chris Quintana:

That's like a quirk of the federal bureaucracy and just sort of the way that colleges more broadly operate. Oftentimes a university system will have multiple campuses across the country and they are charted separately. So you might see a University of Phoenix campus in Hawaii and one in Alabama or Arkansas, but that makes it hard to track. And especially if you do it over multiple years, that can become really challenging. The other issue is that the names of the entities that often own for-profit schools change pretty quickly. Perdoceo Education Corporation had been known as the Career Education Corporation and some of these other companies, too, have closed down altogether, which makes tracking who had received the most GI Bill funding challenging if they're no longer operating.

Taylor Wilson:

Chris Quintana, thanks so much.

Chris Quintana:

Yeah, thank you.

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Taylor Wilson:

Tonight's sundown marks the first day of the holy month of Ramadan for many Muslims around the world. I say many because the exact beginning and ending of Ramadan is based on the sighting of the first crescent moon over Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the timing of which not all Muslim countries agree on. Kuwait's moon-sighting committee, for instance, announced yesterday that Ramadan for their citizens would instead begin at sunset tomorrow on Thursday. Regardless of when it officially begins, Ramadan is observed worldwide as a month of fasting, prayer, reflection, and community. For those of our listeners who are Muslim, Ramadan Mubarak.

And thanks for listening to 5 Things. You can find us every morning right here, wherever you're listening right now. I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: SCOTUS sides with disabled student, GM faces lawsuit: 5 Things podcast