Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-23-07057/USCOURTS-caDC-23-07057-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 448
Nature of Suit: Civil Rights - Education
Cause of Action: 

---

United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued April 19, 2024 Decided September 3, 2024 

No. 23-7057 

MARGDA PIERRE-NOEL, “MS. PIERRE,” ON BEHALF OF HER 

MINOR CHILD K.N., 

APPELLANT

v. 

BRIDGES PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL AND DISTRICT OF 

COLUMBIA, A MUNICIPAL CORPORATION, 

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 1:23-cv-00070) 

Charles A. Sibert argued the cause and filed the briefs for 

appellant. Charles Moran entered an appearance. 

Craig E. Leen was on the brief for amicus curiae Council 

of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, Inc. in support of appellant. 

Jeremy Girton, Assistant Attorney General, Office of the 

Attorney General for the District of Columbia, argued the cause 

for appellee District of Columbia. With him on the brief were 

Brian L. Schwalb, Attorney General, Caroline S. Van Zile, 

Solicitor General, Ashwin P. Phatak, Principal Deputy 

USCA Case #23-7057 Document #2072765 Filed: 09/03/2024 Page 1 of 23
2 

Solicitor General, and Thais-Lyn Trayer, Deputy Solicitor 

General. 

Lauren E. Baum argued the cause and filed the brief for 

appellee Bridges Public Charter School. 

Before: SRINIVASAN, Chief Judge, HENDERSON and RAO, 

Circuit Judges. 

 Opinion for the Court filed by Chief Judge SRINIVASAN. 

SRINIVASAN, Chief Judge: Congress enacted the 

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to ensure that 

children with disabilities are not reflexively segregated from 

their peers at school, or worse, unnecessarily stranded at home. 

The IDEA offers states and the District of Columbia federal 

funds in exchange for complying with various statutory 

requirements. By accepting IDEA funds, a state commits to 

provide every disabled student a “special education” tailored to 

her needs, and to ensure that, to the greatest extent possible, she 

receives that instruction alongside her peers. The IDEA also 

requires states to provide certain “related services” if necessary 

to enable a student to “benefit from” her special education. 

Those “related services” include “transportation” services. 

This appeal centrally concerns the extent of 

“transportation” services that must be provided to K.N., an 

eight-year-old boy living in the District of Columbia. Due to 

multiple disabilities, K.N. has limitations in all areas of 

functioning and depends on a wheelchair and other medical 

devices. After attending school remotely from home in prior 

school years, K.N. was set to join his first-grade classmates in 

person. 

USCA Case #23-7057 Document #2072765 Filed: 09/03/2024 Page 2 of 23
3 

To that end, K.N.’s mother, Margda Pierre-Noel, asked the 

District and his school to help move him from the door of their 

apartment to the bus that would take him to school. Because 

K.N. lives in an apartment building that lacks wheelchair 

accessibility, getting K.N. from his apartment to a vehicle 

requires transporting him across one or more sets of stairs. The 

District denied Pierre-Noel’s request, citing its policy that 

District staff retrieve students only from the outermost door of 

their dwelling (here, the outside door of K.N.’s apartment 

building), and in no event physically lift or carry students. 

According to the District, the IDEA’s mandate to provide 

“transportation” services requires nothing more. 

The district court granted summary judgment in the 

District’s favor, ruling that the service Pierre-Noel seeks for her 

son is not a transportation service under the IDEA. We 

disagree. In our view, the IDEA requires the District to move 

K.N. between his apartment door and the vehicle that will take 

him to and from school. Such door-to-door assistance is 

encompassed by the District’s obligation to provide 

transportation services. And in this case, the District concedes 

that K.N. would require that assistance to be able to attend 

school in person and benefit from his special education. 

I. 

A. 

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), 

20 U.S.C. § 1400 et seq., “represents an ambitious federal 

effort to promote the education of handicapped children, and 

was passed in response to Congress’[s] perception that a 

majority of handicapped children in the United States ‘were 

either totally excluded from schools or [were] sitting idly in 

regular classrooms.’” Bd. of Educ. v. Rowley, 458 U.S. 176, 

179 (1982) (second alteration in original) (quoting H.R. Rep. 

USCA Case #23-7057 Document #2072765 Filed: 09/03/2024 Page 3 of 23
4 

No. 94-332, at 2 (1975)). To remedy that problem, the IDEA 

offers states and the District of Columbia federal funds to help 

educate children with certain physical or intellectual 

disabilities, and conditions that funding on “compliance with 

extensive goals and procedures.” Id. 

In accepting IDEA funds, states and the District agree to 

provide eligible disabled children with a “free appropriate 

public education,” or FAPE. See 20 U.S.C. § 1400(d)(1)(A). 

A FAPE is the IDEA’s “core guarantee,” Fry v. Napoleon 

Cmty. Schs., 580 U.S. 154, 158 (2017), and provides a disabled 

child with both a “special education” and the “related services” 

necessary for her to benefit from that special education, 20 

U.S.C. § 1401(9), (26), (29). A student’s “special education” 

is the “instruction” “specially designed . . . to meet [her] 

unique needs.” Id. § 1401(29). Such instruction must be 

provided “at no cost to parents,” and it can be “conducted in 

the classroom, in the home, in hospitals and institutions, and in 

other settings.” Id. “Related services” are the “transportation” 

services and the “developmental, corrective, and other 

supportive services” that “may be required to assist a 

child . . . to benefit from [her] special education.” Id. 

§ 1401(26)(A). 

The scope of those related services—and in particular the 

meaning of “transportation”—is the core issue in this case. The 

IDEA does not define “transportation,” and only defines 

“developmental, corrective, and other supportive services” 

through a long parenthetical list of examples. See id.; infra pp. 

15–16. 

The provision of a FAPE must be “in conformity with the 

[child’s] individualized education program,” or IEP. Id. 

§ 1401(9)(D); see id. § 1414(d)(2). An IEP “is the means by 

which special education and related services are tailored to the 

USCA Case #23-7057 Document #2072765 Filed: 09/03/2024 Page 4 of 23
5 

unique needs of a particular child.” Endrew F. ex rel. Joseph 

F. v. Douglas Cnty. Sch. Dist. RE-1, 580 U.S. 386, 391 (2017) 

(quotation marks omitted) (quoting Rowley, 458 U.S. at 181). 

An IEP must be in place for each disabled student “[a]t the 

beginning of each school year,” and must outline a 

comprehensive plan to meet the child’s “educational needs.” 

20 U.S.C. § 1414(d)(1)(A)(i)(II), (d)(2)(A). 

Importantly, the IDEA provides that a state is eligible for 

funding only if, among other things, it has “in effect policies 

and procedures to ensure that” students are educated in the 

“[l]east restrictive environment.” Id. § 1412(a)(5). That means 

that, “[t]o the maximum extent appropriate,” disabled children 

must be educated alongside their peers and can be removed 

“from the regular educational environment . . . only when” 

they cannot be “satisfactorily” educated “in regular classes 

with the use of supplementary aids and services.” Id. 

§ 1412(a)(5)(A); see also 34 C.F.R. §§ 300.114–300.120. 

B. 

K.N. is an eight-year-old boy living in the District of 

Columbia. Due to multiple disabilities, including spastic 

quadriplegic cerebral palsy, K.N. is nonverbal and faces 

limitations in all areas of functioning. He depends on a 

wheelchair to move, a tracheostomy tube to breathe, and a 

gastronomy tube to eat and take medication because he cannot 

swallow on his own through his mouth. Considered medically 

fragile, K.N. requires one-on-one assistance from a nurse, as 

well as leg and feet braces, elbow and hand splints, a body suit, 

a pulse oximeter, and a suction machine. 

K.N. attended Bridges Public Charter School remotely 

from home during the 2020–2021 and 2021–2022 school years 

due to the COVID-19 pandemic and his medical conditions. In 

May 2022, Pierre-Noel and school staff met and updated K.N’s 

USCA Case #23-7057 Document #2072765 Filed: 09/03/2024 Page 5 of 23
6 

IEP to provide that he would attend school in person when 

entering first grade that fall. The IEP established that K.N.’s 

least restrictive learning environment was specialized 

instruction with a dedicated nurse aide in school but outside of 

the general education setting. 

Because K.N. would be attending Bridges in person, his 

IEP specified that he would require transportation in a bus with 

a dedicated nurse to monitor his medical equipment. PierreNoel subsequently requested a nurse and an aide who would 

help K.N. not just while on the bus, but who could also move 

him from the door of his apartment to the bus (and vice versa). 

Doing so would require carrying K.N. up and down one or 

more sets of stairs: to access K.N.’s non-wheelchair-accessible 

apartment from the front door of the apartment building, one 

must climb fourteen steps outside the building and descend six 

steps inside it; to do so through the back door of the building, 

one must climb fourteen interior steps. When K.N. was 

younger, home-care nurses carried him down the back stairs to 

get him to the school bus, but he is now too heavy for them to 

lift. As for Pierre-Noel herself, she cannot carry K.N. because 

of a medical condition, and her husband is not home to carry 

K.N. on three of five weekdays because of his job 

responsibilities. According to Pierre-Noel, moreover, K.N. has 

a tendency to squirm and hyperextend his back when carried 

outside his wheelchair. 

The District’s educational agency, the Office of the State 

Superintendent of Education (OSSE), has assumed the 

statutory obligation to provide “transportation” services to 

disabled students in the District. D.C. Code § 38-2907(a). In 

response to Pierre-Noel’s request for assistance with carrying 

K.N. from their apartment to the bus, an OSSE representative 

told her that District employees could not enter their apartment 

building or carry K.N. 

USCA Case #23-7057 Document #2072765 Filed: 09/03/2024 Page 6 of 23
7 

The District cited safety concerns and OSSE policy that 

purports to limit the extent of transportation services the 

District will provide. That policy states that OSSE bus drivers 

and attendants “will utilize lifts, ramps, or other mechanized 

equipment to assist students with wheelchairs,” but “are not 

responsible for providing physical assistance to student 

passengers” beyond “occasional non-intrusive assistance that 

does not require lifting or carrying the student.” D.C. Off. of 

the State Superintendent of Educ., Special Education 

Transportation Policy at 8 (Nov. 6, 2013), 

https://perma.cc/4H75-RWM8. The District, moreover, 

maintains that students eligible for school-bus services will 

only “be picked up from the outermost door of [their] 

residence,” meaning OSSE drivers and attendants will not enter 

any “apartment buildings, lobbies, entryways or alleys.” D.C. 

Off. of the State Superintendent of Educ., Student 

Transportation Family Handbook: 2023–24 School Year at 4, 

5 (2023), https://perma.cc/GY82-56PG. Although Bridges 

amended K.N.’s IEP to specify that he needed the services 

sought by Pierre-Noel, the District maintained its refusal.

Pierre-Noel then pursued administrative relief. As the 

IDEA prescribes, she filed a complaint with OSSE, and the 

matter was adjudicated by a hearing officer in what the statute 

terms a “due process hearing.” See 20 U.S.C. § 1415(b)(6), 

(f)(1)(A), (f)(3)(A). Pierre-Noel’s complaint charged that the 

District and Bridges had denied K.N. a FAPE by refusing to 

transport K.N. pursuant to the transportation accommodations 

outlined in his amended IEP. The hearing officer concluded it 

was beyond his authority to order OSSE to transport K.N. as 

Pierre-Noel requested, but he ordered OSSE to offer K.N. 

transportation services to and from the outer door of K.N.’s 

apartment building. 

USCA Case #23-7057 Document #2072765 Filed: 09/03/2024 Page 7 of 23
8 

As the IDEA permits, Pierre-Noel brought this suit seeking 

review of the hearing officer’s determination. See 20 U.S.C. 

§ 1415(i)(2)(A). She asked the district court to determine that 

the IDEA requires either Bridges or the District to get K.N. 

from his apartment door to school and vice versa because doing 

so is a “transportation” service or a “supportive service” under 

the statute; to order them to perform that service; and to declare 

that in refusing to do so, they were denying K.N. a FAPE. See 

Complaint at 24 (J.A. 503); Pierre-Noel ex rel. K.N. v. Bridges 

Pub. Charter Sch., 660 F. Supp. 3d 29, 32, 37, 44 (D.D.C. 

2023). The court held a hearing in which Pierre-Noel presented 

as a witness the operations officer of a local transportation 

company. He testified that he was familiar with K.N.’s medical 

condition and the layout of K.N.’s apartment building, and that 

his porters could safely transport K.N. between K.N.’s 

apartment door and a vehicle outside. 

The district court held that moving K.N. between the door 

of his apartment and the bus is neither a “transportation” 

service nor a “supportive service” under the IDEA. PierreNoel, 660 F. Supp. 3d at 37–47. The court thus granted the 

District summary judgment on whether it is obligated to 

perform the transportation service outlined in K.N.’s amended 

IEP. See id. at 47, 50. Pierre-Noel now appeals. 

II. 

Pierre-Noel contends that the IDEA requires either the 

District or Bridges to move K.N. from the door of his apartment 

to the school bus and back because doing so (i) is a 

“transportation” service or “supportive service” and (ii) is 

“required to assist” K.N. “to benefit from” the “special 

education” to which he is entitled. See 20 U.S.C. 

§ 1401(26)(A). The District disputes that moving K.N. from 

his apartment to the school bus is a “transportation” service or 

USCA Case #23-7057 Document #2072765 Filed: 09/03/2024 Page 8 of 23
9 

“supportive service” under the IDEA. But the District 

concedes that, if “transportation” service or “supportive 

service” encompasses the assistance Pierre-Noel requests, that 

service is “required to assist” K.N. to “benefit from special 

education” within the meaning of the statute. Id. 

We conclude that the IDEA’s provision for 

“transportation” service obligates the District to transport K.N. 

from his apartment door to the school bus. We thus do not 

address whether that service also qualifies as a “supportive 

service.” Before addressing the merits of the dispute, however, 

we first explain why this appeal is moot as to Bridges but 

otherwise remains justiciable. 

A. 

K.N. is no longer enrolled at Bridges School. Pierre-Noel 

withdrew K.N. from Bridges at the start of the 2023–2024 

school year. Pierre-Noel placed K.N. in a private school for a 

period of time, but then re-enrolled K.N. in the District of 

Columbia Public School system. Upon K.N.’s re-enrollment, 

the District reiterated to Pierre-Noel that it would not transport 

K.N. from his apartment door to the school bus. 

In light of those developments, this appeal is moot as to 

Bridges. “Under Article III of the Constitution,” federal courts 

have jurisdiction only to “adjudicate actual, ongoing

controversies.” Honig v. Doe, 484 U.S. 305, 317 (1988) 

(emphasis added). And there is no ongoing controversy 

between Bridges and K.N.: he no longer attends that school, 

and Pierre-Noel has not made any representations that she 

plans to re-enroll him there. 

There remains a justiciable controversy between K.N. and 

the District, however, because this case presents an issue that 

is capable of repetition but evading review. That exception to 

USCA Case #23-7057 Document #2072765 Filed: 09/03/2024 Page 9 of 23
10 

mootness applies if “(1) the challenged action was in its 

duration too short to be fully litigated prior to its cessation or 

expiration, and (2) there was a reasonable expectation that the 

same complaining party would be subjected to the same action 

again.” J.T. v. District of Columbia, 983 F.3d 516, 523 (D.C. 

Cir. 2020) (citation omitted). Both conditions are met here. 

IDEA cases often satisfy the “evading review” prong 

because, while they can take years to make their way through 

the statute’s “ponderous” administrative and judicial review 

process, they typically involve challenges to decisions or IEPs 

in effect only for a school year or less. District of Columbia v. 

Doe, 611 F.3d 888, 895 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (quoting Honig, 484 

U.S. at 322); see, e.g., J.T., 983 F.3d at 523–24; Jenkins v. 

Squillacote, 935 F.2d 303, 307–08 (D.C. Cir. 1991). For 

instance, Pierre-Noel challenges the District’s refusal to 

transport K.N. in the manner she requests, but the specific 

action she challenges was timebound: it was a refusal to 

provide the services outlined in K.N.’s amended IEP. See 

supra p. 7. As is typically the case, see 20 U.S.C. 

§ 1414(d)(4)(A), (d)(5), that IEP was in effect for the thenupcoming school year but has now been replaced by a new IEP. 

An IEP-based challenge thus ordinarily cannot “be fully 

litigated prior to” the IEP’s “expiration.” J.T., 983 F.3d at 524. 

This dispute also satisfies the “capable of repetition” 

prong. To meet that prong, there must be a “reasonable degree 

of likelihood” that the complained-of “wrong”—defined “in 

terms of the legal questions it presents for decision”—“will be 

the basis of a continuing controversy between the two parties.” 

Id. at 524 (citations and brackets omitted). Here, K.N. does not 

bring a “fact-specific challenge to particular provisions in an 

inoperative IEP.” Id. at 519. Instead, he raises a legal question: 

whether “related services” under the IDEA encompass moving 

him from his apartment door to the school bus. And it is 

USCA Case #23-7057 Document #2072765 Filed: 09/03/2024 Page 10 of 23
11 

reasonably likely that question would be the source of future 

litigation between the parties: K.N. is re-enrolled in a District 

public school, the “nature of his disabilit[ies]” means K.N. 

likely will continue to request the same assistance from the 

District, and the District presumably will continue to “insist[]” 

it has no obligation to provide that assistance. Honig, 484 U.S. 

at 318–19. As a result, the legal issue will likely—if not 

certainly—arise when his new IEP is prepared. See Jenkins, 

935 F.2d at 308. 

For those reasons, while this challenge is moot as to 

Bridges, it remains justiciable as to the District. 

B. 

We turn now to the central question before us: whether 

the door-to-door assistance Pierre-Noel requests on behalf of 

K.N. qualifies as a “transportation” service under the IDEA. 

We conclude that transportation service includes moving K.N. 

between the door of his apartment and the vehicle that will 

transport him to and from school. 

1. 

We consider at the outset the extent to which Spending 

Clause principles of “clear notice” affect our analysis. Those 

principles, according to the District, mean that the IDEA can 

be read to encompass moving K.N. from his apartment door to 

the school bus only if that result is unambiguously clear. We 

are unpersuaded.

In Arlington Central School District Board of Education 

v. Murphy, 548 U.S. 291, 295–96 (2006), the Supreme Court 

reiterated the implications of the IDEA’s status as Spending 

Clause legislation. Because of that status, the Court explained, 

states must have “clear notice” of any obligations they incur if 

USCA Case #23-7057 Document #2072765 Filed: 09/03/2024 Page 11 of 23
12 

they accept IDEA funds. Id. “Unlike ordinary legislation, 

which imposes congressional policy on regulated parties 

involuntarily, Spending Clause legislation operates based on 

consent: in return for federal funds, the recipients agree to 

comply with federally imposed conditions.” Cummings v. 

Premier Rehab Keller, P.L.L.C., 596 U.S. 212, 219 (2022) 

(cleaned up) (quoting Pennhurst State Sch. & Hosp. v. 

Halderman, 451 U.S. 1, 16, 17 (1981)). That dynamic means 

that Spending Clause legislation operates “much in the nature 

of a contract.” Pennhurst, 451 U.S. at 17. The “legitimacy” of 

such legislation “thus rests on whether [a] State voluntarily and 

knowingly accepts the terms of the ‘contract,’” i.e., the 

enforceable obligations that come with acceptance of federal 

funds. Id. And because states “cannot knowingly accept 

conditions of which they are unaware or which they are unable 

to ascertain,” any such conditions “must be set out 

unambiguously.” Murphy, 548 U.S. at 296 (internal quotation 

marks and citation omitted). 

In light of that clear-notice requirement, the District 

argues, it would not be enough to conclude that 

“transportation” is best read to encompass the assistance sought 

by Pierre-Noel. That argument misconceives the salience of 

the clear-notice principle in this case. True, the IDEA must 

make clear to states that they incur an obligation to provide 

transportation services as a condition of accepting IDEA funds. 

The precise scope of that obligation, however, need not be 

spelled out to an extent specifying every factual scenario in 

which it will apply. See Mayweathers v. Newland, 314 F.3d 

1062, 1067 (9th Cir. 2002); cf. Bennett v. Ky. Dep’t of Educ., 

470 U.S. 656, 662, 665–66 (1985); Davis ex rel. LaShonda D. 

v. Monroe Cnty. Bd. of Educ., 526 U.S. 629, 649–50 (1999). 

Rather, for purposes of ascertaining whether a state has “clear 

notice” that it will incur an obligation if it accepts federal funds, 

USCA Case #23-7057 Document #2072765 Filed: 09/03/2024 Page 12 of 23
13 

the “crucial inquiry” is whether “the State could make an 

informed choice.” Pennhurst, 451 U.S. at 25. 

Here, then, the liability a state must “voluntarily and 

knowingly” accept, id. at 17, is the requirement to provide 

transportation services; there is no additional requirement that 

the state know of every scenario encompassed by the 

obligation. On that understanding, the IDEA supplies ample 

notice. No one disputes that the requirement to provide 

“transportation” services to disabled students is an 

unambiguous condition of receiving IDEA funds: the IDEA 

conditions a state’s funding eligibility on providing a FAPE to 

“all children with disabilities residing in” its borders, 20 U.S.C. 

§ 1412(a)(1)(A), and the statute defines a FAPE to include 

“transportation” services, id. § 1401(9), (26). That there may 

be some uncertainty about the extent of the transportation 

obligation does not bear on whether the District made an 

“informed choice” to assume it. See Pennhurst, 451 U.S. at 25. 

So, to conclude that the IDEA requires the District to transport 

K.N. in the door-to-door manner Pierre-Noel requests, we need 

only apply ordinary tools of statutory construction to determine 

that the mandate to provide “transportation” services is best 

read to cover the requested assistance. 

2. 

When denying the transportation request outlined in 

K.N.’s amended IEP, the District cited its policy that bus staff 

cannot go farther than the outermost door of a building and 

cannot carry students. The IDEA requires nothing more, 

according to the District, because “transportation” service 

under the statute “primarily means conveying schoolchildren 

to and from schools using vehicles like school buses.” DC Br. 

17; see also id. at 21, 25–26. That vehicle-based 

understanding, to the District, means the IDEA requires it to 

USCA Case #23-7057 Document #2072765 Filed: 09/03/2024 Page 13 of 23
14 

provide only vehicular transport (busing) and immediate, 

vehicle-adjacent assistance (such as “ramps to assist students 

with disabilities” to board a bus). Id. at 2. In the District’s 

view, accordingly, even its policy of helping a disabled student 

move from the outermost door of his building to the bus (as 

long as there is no need to carry the student) goes beyond the 

vehicle-centered duty imposed by the statute. Aside from its 

claim that “transportation” under the IDEA is vehicle-centric, 

the District presents no other argument for why 

“transportation” services would not encompass the door-todoor assistance Pierre-Noel requests. 

Under the District’s reading, providing “transportation” 

service for a disabled student to attend school would only 

include travel in a vehicle and immediate assistance with 

boarding the vehicle, but would not encompass getting the 

student to the vehicle from his home. The logic of that position 

would seem to mean that, in a school district that provides bus 

service to and from bus stops rather than individual homes, the 

obligation to provide “transportation” service to a disabled 

student would include picking her up and dropping her off at a 

bus stop (and assisting her with getting on and off the bus at 

the stop), but would not encompass getting her from her home 

to the bus stop (and vice versa). 

The District’s interpretation of “transportation” service is 

unduly narrow. The statute, as noted, does not define the term 

“transportation.” Absent a statutory definition, we typically 

interpret a statutory term according to its “ordinary, 

contemporary, common meaning.” Sw. Airlines Co. v. Saxon, 

596 U.S. 450, 455 (2022) (quoting Sandifer v. U.S. Steel Corp., 

571 U.S. 220, 227 (2014)). While dictionaries can often help 

identify a term’s ordinary meaning, they offer limited 

assistance here. Dictionaries around the time of the IDEA’s 

enactment in 1975 do not universally indicate that 

USCA Case #23-7057 Document #2072765 Filed: 09/03/2024 Page 14 of 23
15 

transportation is confined to the vehicle-based limitation 

envisioned by the District. 

The 1968 version of Black’s Law Dictionary defined 

“transportation” as “[t]he removal of goods or persons from 

one place to another, by a carrier,” Transportation, BLACK’S 

LAW DICTIONARY (4th ed. 1968), but it defined “transport” 

more broadly as “[t]o carry or convey from one place to 

another,” Transport, id. The next edition of Black’s Law 

Dictionary, released in 1979, contained the same definition of 

“transport,” but adjusted “transportation” slightly: “The 

movement of goods or persons from one place to another, by a 

carrier.” Transportation, BLACK’S LAW DICTIONARY (5th ed. 

1979) (emphasis added). Other legal and lay dictionaries from 

the same period offered similar definitions, suggesting that 

transportation sometimes—but not always—involves a vehicle 

or carrier. See, e.g., Transport, BALLENTINE’S LAW 

DICTIONARY (3rd ed. 1969) (“To carry from one place to 

another. To convey, as by truck, train, ship, wagon, cart, etc.”); 

Transportation, id. (“The carriage of persons or property from 

one point to another.”); Transport, OXFORD AMERICAN 

HERITAGE DICTIONARY (1976) (“To carry from one place to 

another; convey.”); Transportation, id. (“The act of 

transporting.”). While the focus on a vehicle is perhaps more 

pronounced in entries for the noun (“transportation”) than the 

verb (“transport”), that is far from dispositive. 

That is especially so because we must consider the term 

“transportation” not in isolation, but in its context in the statute. 

The term “transportation” appears in a provision defining the 

“related services” that a state must provide to disabled students: 

The term ‘related services’ means 

transportation, and such developmental, 

corrective, and other supportive services 

USCA Case #23-7057 Document #2072765 Filed: 09/03/2024 Page 15 of 23
16 

(including speech-language pathology and 

audiology services, interpreting services, 

psychological services, physical and 

occupational therapy, recreation, including 

therapeutic recreation, social work services, 

school nurse services designed to enable a child 

with a disability to receive a free appropriate 

public education as described in the 

individualized education program of the child, 

counseling services, including rehabilitation 

counseling, orientation and mobility services, 

and medical services, except that such medical 

services shall be for diagnostic and evaluation 

purposes only) as may be required to assist a 

child with a disability to benefit from special 

education. 

20 U.S.C. § 1401(26)(A). In short, states must provide 

“transportation . . . as may be required to assist a child with a 

disability to benefit from special education.” Id. 

The IDEA thus does not say states must offer students 

“transportation,” full stop. Instead, the statute obligates states 

to provide transportation as a related service to disabled 

children to enable them “to benefit from special education.” Id. 

And it groups “transportation” services of that kind with 

“developmental, corrective, and other supportive services.” Id. 

The latter—e.g., speech pathology services, counseling, 

physical therapy—are naturally tailored to a particular child’s 

individual needs. That the statute links transportation with 

those bespoke services suggests that Congress likewise 

intended transportation services to be comprehensive and 

dependent on the unique needs of a specific child. It suggests, 

then, that the transportation-service obligation can involve the 

USCA Case #23-7057 Document #2072765 Filed: 09/03/2024 Page 16 of 23
17 

kind of door-to-door service sought by Pierre-Noel when 

needed to get a child to the site of her special education. 

So, too, does the fact that “transportation” is modified only 

by the phrase “as may be required to assist a child . . . to benefit 

from special education.” Id. Congress could have specified 

that the transportation obligation is essentially or exclusively 

vehicular. Congress did exactly that in the Americans with 

Disabilities Act, which defines “public school transportation” 

as “transportation by schoolbus vehicles.” 42 U.S.C. 

§ 12141(5). That Congress included no such language in the 

IDEA is notable given that the laws involve closely related 

contexts. See Wis. Cent. Ltd. v. United States, 585 U.S. 274, 

279 (2018); United States v. Ressam, 553 U.S. 272, 276–77 

(2008). Indeed, the Congress that enacted the ADA 

reauthorized the IDEA a few months later without adjusting the 

meaning of “transportation” (even as it adjusted the definition 

of other terms in the IDEA). See Americans with Disabilities 

Act, § 221, Pub. L. No. 101-336, 104 Stat. 327, 339 (1990); 

Education of the Handicapped Act Amendments of 1990, 

§ 101, Pub. L. No. 101-476, 104 Stat. 1103, 1103; see also INS 

v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421, 432 (1987). 

In arguing that its transportation-service obligation should 

be read to contain a vehicular limitation even though the 

provision nowhere mentions vehicles, the District submits that 

its obligation cannot mean a “limitless burden of overcoming 

every obstacle in the student’s path, even those created by the 

family’s decision to live in a remote or inaccessible home.” DC 

Br. 27. Whatever may be the extent of the requirement to 

provide transportation services in circumstances not before us, 

however, this case involves a child who lives in a walk-up 

apartment accessible by stairs, an everyday occurrence that 

hardly would have fallen outside Congress’s expectations in 

enacting the IDEA. 

USCA Case #23-7057 Document #2072765 Filed: 09/03/2024 Page 17 of 23
18 

The statutory scheme in fact cuts against any notion that 

Congress intended the narrow conception of “transportation” 

pressed by the District. Transportation services enable a 

disabled child to “benefit from special education,” 20 U.S.C. 

§ 1401(26)(A); and the IDEA defines “special education” as 

“specially designed instruction” (“to meet the unique needs of 

a child”) not just “in the classroom” but also “in the home, in 

hospitals and institutions, and in other settings,” id. § 1401(29). 

In establishing that special education can take place in myriad 

locations—indeed, in whatever “setting[]” is necessary “to 

meet the unique needs of [the] child,” id.—Congress 

envisioned that, to “benefit from special education,” id. 

§ 1401(26), a disabled student might need to move between 

and within multiple sites and kinds of facilities, not all of which 

will facilitate easy pick up in (and drop off from) a school bus. 

Much of that varied movement would be left unfacilitated, 

however, if “transportation” were defined as narrowly as the 

District urges. If that were so, the scope of the IDEA’s 

transportation-service obligation would stand at odds with the 

reach of the special-education provision. Cf. Parker Drilling 

Mgmt. Servs. v. Newton, 587 U.S. 601, 608–09 (2019). 

 The IDEA also mandates that disabled students be 

educated in the “[l]east restrictive environment.” 20 U.S.C. 

§ 1412(a)(5)(A). The statute, as noted, requires states to ensure 

that: 

[t]o the maximum extent appropriate, children 

with disabilities . . . are educated with children 

who are not disabled, and special classes, 

separate schooling, or other removal of children 

with disabilities from the regular educational 

environment occurs only when the nature or 

severity of the disability of a child is such that 

education in regular classes with the use of 

USCA Case #23-7057 Document #2072765 Filed: 09/03/2024 Page 18 of 23
19 

supplementary aids and services cannot be 

achieved satisfactorily. 

Id. That command to “mainstream” disabled students is a 

central feature of the IDEA’s design. See Honig, 484 U.S. at 

310–11 & n.1. We cannot assume that Congress desired for 

disabled students to be educated in their least restrictive 

learning environment to the maximum extent their abilities 

permit, see 20 U.S.C. § 1412(a)(5)(A), but imposed a limited 

transportation obligation that would foreseeably leave disabled 

students without a way to access that very environment. 

In that regard, adopting the District’s limited conception 

of “transportation” services would “create some tension with 

the purposes of the IDEA.” Garrett F., 526 U.S. at 77. 

Congress enacted the IDEA in part to ensure that disabled 

students previously excluded from the public school system 

and stranded at home could instead attend school. See Rowley, 

458 U.S. at 189; see also 20 U.S.C. § 1400(c)(2). In particular, 

the IDEA “makes specific provision for services, like 

transportation,” to “enable a child to be physically present in 

class.” Irving Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Tatro, 468 U.S. 883, 891 

(1984). The narrow interpretation of “transportation” urged by 

the District would leave some disabled children unable to leave 

their homes and join their classmates in school. K.N. is such a 

student. 

In sum, the IDEA’s terms, scheme, and purpose indicate 

that “transportation” services include the door-to-door 

assistance sought by Pierre-Noel for K.N. The District’s 

contention that “transportation” connotes only vehicular 

movement is unpersuasive, and the District offers no other 

reason to conclude that transportation services exclude what 

Pierre-Noel requests. The service she seeks—moving K.N. 

from their apartment to the vehicle that will take him to 

USCA Case #23-7057 Document #2072765 Filed: 09/03/2024 Page 19 of 23
20 

school—fits within the scope of transportation services that 

must be provided to disabled students. 

3. 

As the IDEA contemplates, the Department of Education 

has issued a regulation interpreting and expounding on the 

“related services” required by the statute. 20 U.S.C. § 1406(a); 

34 C.F.R. § 300.34. The District contends that the 

Department’s regulation contemplates that “transportation” 

under the IDEA means essentially vehicular travel and 

immediately adjacent assistance. That contention misses the 

mark twice over. As an initial matter, the Department’s 

regulations could not narrow the operative meaning of 

“transportation” envisioned by the statute, Env’t Def. Fund v. 

EPA, 922 F.3d 446, 457 (D.C. Cir. 2019), which, as just 

explained, is broader than the vehicle-centric scope urged by 

the District. And, regardless, we disagree with the District’s 

interpretation of the relevant regulation. 

That regulation generally addresses the scope of “related 

services” encompassed by the IDEA, and a subsection 

specifically addressed to transportation provides that 

“[t]ransportation includes”: 

(i) Travel to and from school and between 

schools; 

(ii) Travel in and around school buildings; and 

(iii) Specialized equipment (such as special or 

adapted buses, lifts, and ramps), if required to 

provide special transportation for a child with a 

disability. 

34 C.F.R. § 300.34(c)(16). 

USCA Case #23-7057 Document #2072765 Filed: 09/03/2024 Page 20 of 23
21 

We read that subsection to encompass the kind of service 

Pierre-Noel requests. Under the first prong, “[t]ravel to and 

from school” can naturally include something more than just 

pickup and drop-off at the curb, depending on a child’s needs. 

And the second prong undercuts the District’s interpretation 

that transportation is primarily vehicular: “[t]ravel in and 

around school buildings,” id. (emphasis added), will often be 

accomplished through non-vehicular means—for example, 

manually pushing a wheelchair around the school campus. 

The Department itself at one time espoused the 

understanding that the regulation encompasses door-to-door 

assistance. In 2006, after notice and comment, the Department 

made various changes to the statute’s implementing 

regulations. Service Obligations Under Special Education, 71 

Fed. Reg. 32396 (July 5, 2006). When explaining the changes, 

the Department noted that some commenters requested that the 

regulation “explicitly define transportation as door-to-door 

services, including provisions for an aide to escort the child to 

and from the bus each day.” Assistance to States for the 

Education of Children with Disabilities and Preschool Grants 

for Children with Disabilities, 71 Fed. Reg. 46540, 46576 

(Aug. 14, 2006). The Department declined to make that change 

because, in its view, the regulatory definition of transportation 

already was “sufficiently broad to address” that concern. See 

id. 

C. 

Having concluded that the door-to-door assistance PierreNoel requests fits within the scope of “transportation” services 

mandated by the IDEA, we proceed to address two follow-on 

questions. First, is K.N. in fact entitled to that service because 

it is “required” for him “to benefit from [his] special 

education”? 20 U.S.C. § 1401(26)(A). And second, if he is so 

USCA Case #23-7057 Document #2072765 Filed: 09/03/2024 Page 21 of 23
22 

entitled, does the obligation to provide the service rest with the 

District or instead with his school? 

The IDEA calls for a state to provide a student with 

transportation services only to the degree the services “may be 

required to assist [the] child . . . to benefit from special 

education.” Id. Here, the District concedes that the requested 

service is “required” within the meaning of the statute. While 

maintaining that it will be appropriate in some cases to inquire 

into whether the requested service is indeed necessary, the 

District concedes that, if the assistance K.N. requests is a 

“transportation” service under the IDEA, then that service is 

necessary for K.N. to benefit from his special education. We 

have no occasion to undertake the inquiry in light of the 

District’s concession, and we leave for another day an 

examination of what a student might need to show to establish 

she requires the service in question. 

Turning to the second question, the obligation to provide 

the transportation service K.N. requires falls on the District, not 

his school. Recall that the District has assumed the 

responsibility to provide IDEA-mandated “transportation” 

services. D.C. Code §§ 38-2901(12), 38-2907(a). The District 

contends, however, that it retains discretion to provide 

statutorily obligated services only to the degree it deems 

appropriate. That position rests on a misreading of the IDEA’s 

operative provision. 

The relevant provision states that, when a “[s]tate 

educational agency” (here, OSSE) assumes responsibility for 

“provid[ing] . . . related services directly to children,” that 

agency may provide . . . [the] related 

services . . . in such manner and at such 

locations . . . as [it] considers appropriate. Such 

USCA Case #23-7057 Document #2072765 Filed: 09/03/2024 Page 22 of 23
23 

education and services shall be provided in 

accordance with this subchapter. 

20 U.S.C. § 1413(g)(1), (2) (emphasis added). The District 

submits that the phrase “as the State educational agency 

considers appropriate,” id., means that it need not provide a 

service if it believes it cannot do so in a way it considers 

appropriate. That is incorrect. As the language emphasized 

above confirms, states have some discretion in determining 

how to deliver required services but do not have discretion to 

decline to provide required services in the first place. 

In sum, the IDEA entitles K.N. to be transported from his 

apartment to the vehicle that will take him to school, and, by 

assuming the responsibility to provide transportation services 

under the statute, the District must perform that task. Insofar 

as the district court on remand determines that injunctive relief 

is appropriate, we clarify one aspect of our decision. Until 

now, the parties have suggested that moving K.N. between his 

apartment and the vehicle would require physically lifting and 

carrying him. The District, though, could fulfill its statutory 

obligation in a “manner” it “considers appropriate.” 20 U.S.C. 

§ 1413(g)(2); see, e.g., 34 C.F.R. § 300.34(c)(16)(iii) 

(providing that transportation under the IDEA includes use of 

“lifts” and “ramps”). 

* * * * * 

For the foregoing reasons, we dismiss as moot the appeal 

with respect to Bridges Public Charter School. We otherwise 

vacate the district court’s grant of summary judgment and 

remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. 

So ordered. 

USCA Case #23-7057 Document #2072765 Filed: 09/03/2024 Page 23 of 23