A Penn State professor who is deaf has filed a disability discrimination lawsuit against the university alleging it violated federal civil rights laws when it revoked his American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters and provided him with inadequate alternatives.
Joseph Valente, an associate professor of education at Penn State since 2010 and co-director of the Center for Disability Studies, said the university violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and Rehabilitation Act as a cost-cutting measure and retaliated against him when he sought to have his disability accommodation restored.
According to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. Middle District Court of Pennsylvania, a plan to provide Valente with two full-time designated ASL interpreters and qualified backups familiar with his academic subject matter was formalized in 2013-14. However, in 2021, the university “unilaterally decided to reduce ASL interpreting services to one full-time interpreter,” and, according to the lawsuit, implemented the reduction in 2023 through a “Reasonable Accommodation Framework” developed without Valente’s knowledge.
The framework “imposes arbitrary restrictions on interpreter access based primarily on meeting size, disregarding crucial factors such as meeting duration, subject matter complexity, specialized academic vocabulary, and interpreter fatigue,” Valente’s attorneys wrote. Interpreter services for faculty meetings were replaced with AI-generated captions that often fail to provide accurate and contextually appropriate translations for academic discussions.
When Valente began advocating to have his original accommodation terms restored, he said the university retaliated against him. The lawsuit claims that, starting in 2023, faculty began soliciting complaints against him, refusing to provide Valente with information about any allegations. In 2024, the university abruptly canceled his graduate-level classes, and he alleges the three doctoral students and one master’s degree student he advised were encouraged to seek alternate advisors.
“Penn State’s actions have marginalized Dr. Valente within the academic community, caused significant project delays, and inflicted financial harm,” his attorneys wrote.
Valente is seeking, among other relief, unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, restoration of his two full-time ASL interpreters, a centralized funding system for the accommodation, an oversight mechanism for accommodation decisions, and implementation of comprehensive disability training programs.
“Through this action, Dr. Valente seeks to vindicate not only his own rights under federal disability law, but also to ensure that Penn State fulfills its legal obligations to provide reasonable accommodations to faculty members with disabilities and maintain an academic environment free from discrimination and retaliation,” the attorneys wrote.
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Penn State News (2/18/25) By Geoff Rushton