California students with learning disabilities who take the Medical College Admission Test should not receive extra time under state law, an appeals court ruled on Thursday, reversing a lower court’s decision.

The ruling allows the Association of American Medical Colleges, which administers the MCAT, to use nationwide standards under the Americans With Disabilities Act when considering requests from learning-disabled students for more time. The entrance exam is required by nearly every medical school in the United States.

Four college graduates with dyslexia and other learning disabilities sued the association in 2004, asserting they were being denied a medical education because they were not allowed extra time to take the MCAT. A state district court agreed, requiring the association to revise its procedures for evaluating who gets extra time on the test, a decision that some advocates for the disabled said would have national implications.

But the First District Court of Appeal, in San Francisco, reversed that decision on Thursday, holding that the state disability law’s protections, which are more expansive than those in federal law, do not apply to requests for extra time. A lawyer for the medical-college association, Robert Burgoyne, told the San Francisco Chronicle that the ruling would allow questions of accommodation to be “applied consistently across the country.”

A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Joshua Konecky, told the newspaper that the ruling “sets back the law on disability rights, disability access by about 30 years.” He said his clients would probably appeal the ruling to the California Supreme Court. —Josh Keller