The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that the Orange County, California, taxpayers had to pay for special private schooling for a high school student suffering from "attention deficit disorder," despite his alleged extremely disruptive behavior. School officials said the boy peddled cigarettes on campus, set fires, threatened to kill classmates, and kicked his pregnant mother in the stomach (sending her to live outside the family home for several months purely out of fear of her son). Said a state education official explaining the court's ruling, "What really matters is the individual needs of the child."

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