@jdozier-ezell the problem with disabling the validation is that you can do that per model, meaning that also every other model will skip the validation.
Moreover I won’t advise to skip the validation on a field or extend our API in that direction as the purpose of validations is to prevent frontend code to get overcomplicated by checking if a value is present or not every time, so that would defeat the purpose, right?
We have planned this though: Custom validation that should come soon and would give you total freedom by implementing a validation rule on your side, something that would integreate perfectly with a plugin for example!
Would that be good for you?