Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-06-07102/USCOURTS-caDC-06-07102-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 550
Nature of Suit: Prisoner - Civil Rights (U.S. defendant)
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued September 10, 2007 Decided October 19, 2007 

No. 06-7102 

ANTONIO HESTER AND

DALE WILLIAMS, FATHER OF ANTONIO HESTER, 

APPELLEES

v. 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, ET AL., 

APPELLANTS

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 04cv01291) 

Mary T. Connelly, Assistant Attorney General, Office of 

Attorney General for the District of Columbia, argued the 

cause for appellants. With her on the briefs were Linda J. 

Singer, Attorney General, Todd S. Kim, Solicitor General, and 

Edward E. Schwab, Deputy Solicitor General. 

Emmanuel Nwazuo Agbara, Student Counsel, argued the 

cause for appellees. With him on the brief was Joseph B. 

Tulman. 

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Before: ROGERS and KAVANAUGH, Circuit Judges, and 

SILBERMAN, Senior Circuit Judge. 

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge

KAVANAUGH. 

KAVANAUGH, Circuit Judge: In April 2001, Antonio 

Hester pled guilty in a Maryland court to two criminal 

offenses. He was sentenced to incarceration in a Maryland 

prison. At the time, Hester was a 17-year-old D.C. public 

school student receiving special education services from the 

District of Columbia under the federal Individuals with 

Disabilities Education Act. After the Maryland criminal 

proceedings, D.C. reached an agreement with Hester that it 

would provide him with special education services in the 

Maryland prison. This case arises because Maryland prison 

officials did not permit D.C.’s designated education providers 

into the prison; instead, Maryland provided Hester its own 

IDEA services. 

Hester sued the District of Columbia, seeking 

“compensatory” special education services from D.C. to make 

up for the time he spent in the Maryland prison without 

services from D.C. – even though he received such services in 

prison from Maryland. The District Court ruled for Hester. 

The court held that the 2001 agreement between D.C. and 

Hester contemplated that D.C. would provide special 

education services after Hester’s release from incarceration if 

D.C.’s educational providers could not obtain access to the 

Maryland prison. We disagree with the District Court’s 

interpretation of the 2001 agreement, and we reverse. 

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I 

 The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires 

states and the District of Columbia, as a condition of their 

receiving federal special education funding, to provide 

disabled children with a “free appropriate public education.” 

20 U.S.C. § 1412(a). Antonio Hester, a D.C. student, was 

learning disabled and began receiving IDEA special education 

services from D.C. in 1994, when he was 10. See 20 U.S.C. 

§ 1414(d). 

In April 2001, at age 17, Hester pled guilty to criminal 

charges in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The Maryland 

court sentenced him to 10 years in a Maryland prison, with a 

possibility of parole after five years. 

Shortly after the sentencing, Hester filed an IDEA 

administrative request in the District of Columbia. He asked 

that D.C. provide him a free appropriate public education 

“while in the correctional institution.” Hearing Officer 

Determination, No. 2001-0655 (May 31, 2001), Joint 

Appendix (“J.A.”) 70; see also 20 U.S.C. § 1415(f). Hester 

and D.C. then reached an oral agreement about the special 

education services he would receive in prison, and the 

administrative hearing officer incorporated the agreement into 

a Hearing Officer Determination. 

Under the 2001 agreement, the Certified Learning Center 

(CLC), a private organization that offers special education 

services, would educate Hester in the Maryland prison. See

Hearing Officer Determination, J.A. 71. The agreement 

further stated that D.C. would “forward a letter” to Maryland 

correctional authorities requesting facilities in which CLC 

could meet with Hester. Id. at 72. But the agreement did not 

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specify a course of action if D.C. officials could not obtain 

access to the Maryland prison. 

 Problems arose when CLC Director Patricia Felton 

attempted to carry out the agreement. When Felton initially 

met with Daphne Matthews, principal of the Maryland 

prison’s education program, Matthews cautioned that CLC 

educators may not be allowed into the prison. Felton followed 

up with many phone calls to Matthews. But Matthews 

responded that she “simply couldn’t get [CLC] instructors in 

to facilitate the instruction,” in part due to security concerns. 

Hearing Transcript (March 19, 2004), J.A. 175. Matthews 

told Felton that Maryland officials instead were developing 

their own IDEA Individualized Education Program (IEP) for 

Hester. 

In 2001, Maryland officials developed the IEP for Hester; 

in 2002 and 2003, they reviewed and revised the plan. See 20 

U.S.C. § 1414(d)(4)(A)(i) (requiring that the local educational 

agency review a child’s IEP “not less frequently than 

annually”). Hester participated in all three Maryland IEP 

meetings, and his attorney represented him at the 2002 and 

2003 meetings. Consistent with the Maryland IEP, Hester 

received special education services from Maryland while in 

the Maryland prison. 

In December 2003, Hester filed an IDEA administrative 

complaint against the District of Columbia challenging D.C.’s 

failure to provide him with the services required under the 

2001 agreement. Reasoning that Maryland did not allow CLC 

into the prison and noting that Maryland provided IDEA 

education services to Hester, the administrative hearing 

officer found that D.C. did not breach the 2001 agreement. 

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 Hester then sued the District of Columbia, requesting 

special education services from D.C. to make up for the time 

he spent in the Maryland prison without receiving services 

from D.C. Complaint, Hester v. District of Columbia, No. 04-

1291 (D.D.C. July 30, 2004). The District Court granted 

summary judgment to Hester based on its interpretation of the 

2001 agreement: “Foreseeing that [Maryland prison officials] 

might not permit CLC to enter the facility to provide 

educational services to Hester, the parties agreed that the 

educational services could be provided in the form of 

compensatory education after Hester’s release.” Hester v. 

District of Columbia, 433 F. Supp. 2d 71, 76 (D.D.C. 2006). 

We review de novo the District Court’s interpretation of 

the 2001 agreement and its grant of summary judgment. See

Tax Analysts v. IRS, 495 F.3d 676, 679 (D.C. Cir. 2007); 

KiSKA Const. Corp. v. Wash. Metro. Area Transit Auth., 321 

F.3d 1151, 1158 (D.C. Cir. 2003). The agreement is a 

contract governed by D.C. law. See Makins v. District of 

Columbia, 277 F.3d 544, 547-48 (D.C. Cir. 2002). 

II 

While Hester was serving time in the Maryland prison, 

Maryland assumed responsibility for Hester’s education and 

did not allow D.C.’s designated education providers into the 

prison. See 34 C.F.R. § 300.2 (applying IDEA to state and 

local correctional facilities); see also 20 U.S.C. 

§ 1412(a)(11)(C); 34 C.F.R. § 300.149. Because Maryland 

officials made it impracticable for D.C. to provide special 

education services in the prison, D.C. did not breach its 2001 

agreement with Hester: “Where, after a contract is made, a 

party’s performance is made impracticable without his fault 

by the occurrence of an event the non-occurrence of which 

was a basic assumption on which the contract was made, his 

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duty to render that performance is discharged, unless the 

language or the circumstances indicate the contrary.” 

RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF CONTRACTS § 261 (1981); see 

also Bergman v. Parker, 216 A.2d 581, 583 (D.C. 1966); 

Whelan v. Griffith Consumers Co., 170 A.2d 229, 230 (D.C. 

1961); RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF CONTRACTS § 264 (“If the 

performance of a duty is made impracticable by having to 

comply with a domestic or foreign governmental regulation or 

order, that regulation or order is an event the non-occurrence 

of which was a basic assumption on which the contract was 

made.”). 

In an attempt to avoid straightforward application of the 

contract impracticability doctrine, Hester advances three 

arguments. None is persuasive. 

First, Hester argues – and the District Court agreed – that 

the 2001 agreement required D.C. to provide Hester with 

special education services after his release from prison if D.C. 

did not provide such services in prison. We do not read the 

agreement that way. The agreement refers repeatedly to 

Hester’s confinement, explaining that D.C. will provide 

services to him “while in the correctional institution,” “while 

he is incarcerated in Maryland,” and “while Antonio is 

incarcerated.” Hearing Officer Determination, No. 2001-0655 

(May 31, 2001), J.A. 70, 71, 72. And more to the point, the 

agreement by its terms says nothing to suggest that D.C. 

would provide services after Hester’s release from prison in 

the event Maryland declined D.C.’s request for access to 

Hester and instead decided to provide special education 

services itself. We therefore reject Hester’s argument that the 

terms of the agreement required D.C. to provide special 

education services after Hester’s release from the Maryland 

prison. 

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Second, according to Hester, D.C. admitted in the district 

court that the 2001 agreement contemplated services after 

Hester’s release from prison. Hester points to his statement of 

undisputed material facts in support of summary judgment, 

which purportedly asserted that D.C. had agreed to provide 

services after Hester’s release if D.C. could not provide 

services to Hester in prison. And Hester suggests that D.C. 

conceded this factual point by not contesting it in opposition 

to Hester’s summary judgment motion. See U.S. Dist. Ct. for 

D.C. Local R. 7(h) (“In determining a motion for summary 

judgment, the court may assume that facts identified by the 

moving party in its statement of material facts are admitted, 

unless such a fact is controverted in the statement of genuine 

issues filed in opposition to the motion.”). The waiver 

argument rests, however, on a mistaken premise: Hester’s 

statement of undisputed material facts in support of summary 

judgment made no such claim about the 2001 agreement; this 

assertion instead appeared in Hester’s statement of material 

disputed facts in opposition to D.C.’s summary judgment 

motion. For that reason, D.C. had no obligation or occasion to 

controvert this contention in its opposition to Hester’s 

summary judgment motion. In short, D.C. has consistently 

maintained that the 2001 agreement did not contemplate 

services after Hester’s release from the Maryland prison; D.C. 

has never waived the argument. 

Third, Hester contends that D.C. did not live up to its 

obligations under the 2001 agreement, thus requiring D.C. to 

compensate for the breach by providing him with special 

education services after his release from prison. Hester argues 

that the agreement obligated D.C. to do more to obtain access 

to the Maryland prison; in particular, Hester notes that the 

agreement specifically required D.C. officials to “forward a 

letter” to Maryland officials requesting facilities for CLC to 

meet with Hester in prison. To begin with, Hester’s argument 

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overlooks the extensive personal efforts of CLC Director 

Patricia Felton (on behalf of D.C.) to obtain access to the 

prison – efforts that went well beyond what the agreement 

required, albeit ultimately to no avail. In any event, even 

assuming that D.C. did not fully meet its obligation to 

“forward a letter,” the Maryland officials repeatedly and 

definitively stated that D.C.’s designated education providers 

would not be allowed into the prison, in part because of 

security concerns. As a result, D.C.’s mere failure to forward 

a letter to Maryland plainly did not cause Hester’s inability to 

obtain special education services from D.C. while in prison, 

and thus cannot be a basis for now requiring D.C. to provide 

“compensatory” special education services to Hester. See

RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF CONTRACTS § 347 cmt. e 

(“Recovery can be had only for loss that would not have 

occurred but for the breach.”); cf. Anda v. Ralston Purina Co., 

959 F.2d 1149, 1152-53 (1st Cir. 1992). 

* * * 

We understand and appreciate the desire of Antonio 

Hester, his family, and his representatives to secure additional 

special education services. But the 2001 agreement between 

D.C. and Hester does not entitle Hester to such services from 

D.C. We therefore reverse the judgment of the District Court, 

remand, and direct that the District Court grant D.C.’s crossmotion for summary judgment. 

So ordered. 

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