The Courts

U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
Parents Can’t Revive Failed IDEA Dispute
Ruling: Parents who lost the right to sue their ISD in a special-ed dispute involving their son because they waited too late to file the required special-ed administrative complaint can’t sue anyway by simply dropping all references to special-ed violations from their lawsuit. T.B., et al., v. Northwest ISD, et al., No. 19-11115 (combined majority and dissenting opinions). Issued Nov. 23. Ordered “published.”

The parents of T.B. claimed that when their son was a 10-year-old NWISD student, he experienced extreme, frequent behavioral problems linked to his ADHD. His teacher, they claimed, responded to one of their son’s extreme outbursts by knocking him from a table where he had climbed onto, and dragged him through two classrooms before climbing on top of him.

The parents filed a succession of special-ed complaints that were all dismissed without a hearing because they were filed after the one-year filing deadline had expired.

Although special-ed law bars the filing of special-ed lawsuits in federal courts unless the underlying dispute has completed the administrative complaint process that ends with a final ruling by a special-ed hearing officer, the parents filed suit anyway on claims that omitted any references to special ed or to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

They appealed to the Fifth Circuit after the trial judge granted NWISD’s motion to dismiss.

2-1 Decision
In a 2-1 decision, a majority of the three-judge Fifth Circuit panel hearing the appeal upheld dismissal on findings that despite the lack of specific language in the parents’ claims referencing special ed and IDEA, the parents’ unstated complaint — based on the specific circumstances cited — was that their son had been denied a free appropriate public education (FAPE).

Thus, the suit must be dismissed because the parents had not first completed the special-ed administrative complaint process, the majority opinion states.

The dissenting justice said the suit should have been sent back to the trial judge to make specific findings on each of the parents’ individual claims to determine which are FAPE violation claims (to be dismissed) and which are non-FAPE claims eligible for continued litigation.