The bankruptcy petition from the Puerto Rican government will not only affect its creditors, but also vulnerable sectors of the population, such as special education children and teenagers.

This is what transpired with the news that the case of Rosa Lydia Vélez vs. Department of Education—which has been ongoing for over 37years—could be put on pause.

Attorney José Juan Nazario, who has been leading this class action lawsuit, revealed today that the Department of Education (DE) intends to petition the Justice Department to halt everything related to the award of damages in this case, as well as to stop all services currently provided to the Special Education Program students, by withholding instructors and student support services.

This is an ongoing case that is still being disputed in court, with approximately 17,000 reported cases joining the lawsuit. However, this is an extremely low number, since more than 300,000 students, mothers, or guardians of special education children could be affected if the DE fails to provide adequate services.

'The Department of Education has been hailing and celebrating their own achievements for years. We consistently challenge their achievements, because we have actually experienced it and know they're not compliant,' said Carmen Warren, activist for special education children.

'This would generate absolute chaos in educational services, related services, therapies... We're very worried about what will happen to the students and parents regarding those services,' Warren added.

This case was filed in 1980 by several parents who claimed their disabled children were not receiving the special education services they were entitled to, according to the applicable federal and state laws.

The claimants requested the case to be certified as a class action lawsuit, and they demanded to be awarded damages for the State's non-compliance.

According to the Justice Department, there are currently two phases being addressed under case reference # KPE1980-1738: the interdiction phase, and the damage phase. The first phase is focused on the process to monitor or evaluate the fulfillment of the partial sentence, as per the dictated stipulations, which entails a sentence enforcement stage.

The damage phase is concerned with the compensation being requested by the class members for the alleged damages inflicted by the Department of Education (DE) when it failed to provide the corresponding related services.

In terms of this latter phase, the current case law is the Order and Resolution of January 12, 2017, which ordered the deconsolidation of disputes and laid out the form and manner in which the filed claims will be addressed, within the procedures provided by court. Nonetheless, remaining within the case, and as part of the same, is the damage claim from the original plaintiffs, except for the one filed by Rosa Lydia Vélez, for which a partial sentence was passed.

The Justice Department's legal representatives at the administrative hearing held on Monday, May 15 stated that the automatic stay to be enacted given the court's lack of jurisdiction only corresponds to the case, and it does not affect the Education Department's obligation to continue providing the services it is obligated to render by law.

Nazario explained that, after the Government filed for bankruptcy, on Monday, May 15, in an administrative hearing on the monitoring process of the interdiction phase, the claimants learned that the State had announced it would be requesting a stay on the procedures for the interdiction and damages phases.

'As of this moment, they haven't filed any written motions to request the stay, even though an automatic stay has supposedly been in force since May 3. So we don't know what their bases are to allegedly paralyze this procedure. We do know that there were talks yesterday about a new monitoring plan for the next few years, as proposed by the monitor leading the enforcement of the interdiction phase (ClaudiaJuan),' Nazario disclosed.

Nonetheless, the attorney added that the DE would now have to file an official motion in court to justify the stay on the case.

'We've asserted that the stay on the damage claims could be retroactive to May 3. So this nullifies everything that has happened since May 3 with the court orders to collect the fees and have the claims filed individually. These lawsuits will be seen at the various regional levels, and this will depend on whether the process has been effectively paralyzed or not,' Nazario explained.

'At the interdiction phase, as we understand it, it would not be appropriate to halt the services the Department of Education is obligated to provide to its special education students,' Nazario concluded. He also noted that they would fiercely oppose the stay on the monitoring process, because this would return the DE to that time period in the 80s, when the agency was failing to comply with the law.

On May 3, the Government was supposed to submit all the claims they wished to halt in bankruptcy court. However, the damage claims were not presented, and thus the federal court assumes that these claims are not part of the stay process.