Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-12-16818/USCOURTS-ca9-12-16818-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 446
Nature of Suit: Americans with Disabilities Act - Other
Cause of Action: 

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FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

FAIRFIELD-SUISUN UNIFIED SCHOOL

DISTRICT,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

STATE OF CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT

OF EDUCATION,

Defendant-Appellee.

No. 12-16665

D.C. No.

2:11-cv-02796-

LKK-GGH

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Eastern District of California

Lawrence K. Karlton, Senior District Judge, Presiding

YOLO COUNTY OFFICE OF

EDUCATION,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

STATE OF CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT

OF EDUCATION,

Defendant-Appellee.

No. 12-16818

D.C. No.

2:11-cv-03224-

MCE-JFM

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Eastern District of California

Morrison C. England, Jr., Chief District Judge, Presiding

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2 FAIRFIELD-SUISUN USD V. CAL. DEP’T OF EDUC.

Argued and Submitted

October 9, 2014—San Francisco, California

Filed March 16, 2015

Before: William A. Fletcher and Paul J. Watford, Circuit

Judges, and Kevin Thomas Duffy, District Judge.*

Opinion by Judge Watford

SUMMARY**

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

Affirming the dismissal of two lawsuits brought against

the California Department of Education, the panel held that

two local educational agencies, a school district and a county

office of supervision, lacked a statutory right of action to seek

declaratory and injunctive relief regarding alleged violations

of certain procedural requirements of the Individuals with

Disabilities Education Act and its implementing regulations

regarding complaint resolution proceedings.

* The Honorable Kevin Thomas Duffy, District Judge for the U.S.

District Court for the Southern District of New York, sitting by

designation.

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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FAIRFIELD-SUISUN USD V. CAL. DEP’T OF EDUC. 3

COUNSEL

Kimberly A. Smith (argued), Roy A. Combs, Jan E. Tomsky,

and Emily E. Sugrue, Fagen Friedman & Fulfrost, Oakland,

California, for Plaintiff-Appellant Fairfield-Suisun Unified

School District.

Kimberly A. Smith (argued), Roy A. Combs, Elizabeth B.

Mori, and Christopher J. Fernandes, Fagen Friedman &

Fulfrost, Oakland, California, for Plaintiff-Appellant Yolo

County Office of Education.

Leonard Garfinkel (argued), Deputy General Counsel; Amy

Bisson Holloway, General Counsel; and Edmundo Aguilar,

Assistant General Counsel, California Department of

Education, Sacramento, California, for Defendant-Appellee.

OPINION

WATFORD, Circuit Judge:

The plaintiffs in these consolidated appeals are local

educational agencies in California—one a school district, the

other a county office of education. (For ease of reference, we

will refer to both of them as school districts.) In separate,

unrelated actions, they sued the California Department of

Education in federal court. They allege that, in resolving

disputes between parents and school districts, such as the

disputes that led to these actions, the Department routinely

violates certain procedural requirements imposed by the

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and its

implementing regulations. The school districts seek a

declaration that the challenged practices are unlawful and an

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injunction forbidding their use in resolving future disputes. 

In both cases, the district courts dismissed the actions with

prejudice on the ground that Congress did not grant school

districts the right to sue state agencies for violating

procedural requirements imposed by the IDEA.

The details underlying each lawsuit are not important for

our purposes, so we provide just a brief description here. In

both cases, the parents of a disabled student filed a complaint

against the school district with the California Department of

Education. The complaints charged the school districts with

violating the IDEA by failing to provide appropriate services

to the students in question. The parents pursued their

complaints through what’s known as a “complaint resolution

proceeding,” one of two dispute-resolution mechanisms

States are required to maintain as a condition of receiving

federal funds under the IDEA. 34 C.F.R. § 300.151(a). A

complaint resolution proceeding may be initiated by parents

to remedy a public agency’s violation of any requirement

imposed by certain provisions of the IDEA and its

implementing regulations. § 300.153(b)(1). In California,

complaint resolution proceedings are resolved by the

Department of Education, which, after conducting an on-site

investigation if necessary, must issue a written decision

addressing each allegation in the complaint. § 300.152(a)(1),

(5). Neither the IDEA nor the federal regulations

implementing it specify whether a party dissatisfied with the

outcome of a complaint resolution proceeding may obtain

further review.

The other dispute-resolution mechanism required as a

condition of funding—not involved here but relevant by way

of background—is a “due process hearing.” Either parents or

school districts may initiate a due process hearing, but those

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FAIRFIELD-SUISUN USD V. CAL. DEP’T OF EDUC. 5

hearings are limited to “any matter relating to the

identification, evaluation, or educational placement of the

child, or the provision of a free appropriate public education

to such child.” 20 U.S.C. § 1415(b)(6)(A). In California, due

process hearings are conducted by the Office of

Administrative Hearings, a state agency independent of the

Department of Education. M.M. v. Lafayette Sch. Dist.,

681 F.3d 1082, 1085, 1092 (9th Cir. 2012). A party

dissatisfied with the outcome of a due process hearing may

obtain further review by filing a civil action in state or federal

court. 20 U.S.C. § 1415(i)(2)(A).

In both of the cases before us, the complaint resolution

proceedings ended with the Department of Education issuing

a written decision in the parents’ favor. The school districts

were dissatisfied not only with the outcome of the

proceedings but also with some of the procedures the

Department followed in resolving the underlying

disputes—procedures that the school districts contend violate

the IDEA and its implementing regulations. More

specifically, in one of the two proceedings, the Department

issued a decision in the parents’ favor, then issued a decision

in the school district’s favor on reconsideration, and then,

after reconsidering the matter a second time, issued a final

decision in the parents’ favor. The school district alleges that

the Department’s practice of allowing more than one

reconsideration conflicts with state regulations implementing

the IDEA. See Cal. Code Regs. tit. 5, § 4665. (We will

assume for purposes of this opinion that the school district

could, if given an opportunity, tie the violation of this state

regulation to a violation of federal law.) The school district

also alleges that the Department has a practice, which it

followed here, of considering conduct outside the 1-year

statute of limitations imposed by 34 C.F.R. § 300.153(c). In

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the second proceeding, the school district contends the

Department imposed the burden of proof on the school

district when it should have been imposed on the parents, also

allegedly in violation of the IDEA.

Rather than pursue whatever relief might have been

available in state court, the school districts sued the

California Department of Education in federal court. The

school districts allege that the challenged procedural

violations are standard practice and will be repeated in future

complaint resolution proceedings unless the injunctive relief

they seek is granted.1

A plaintiff suing in federal court must establish not only

a source of subject matter jurisdiction, provided here by

20 U.S.C. § 1415(i)(3)(A), but also the existence of a right of

action authorizing the court to grant the requested relief. 

Because the school districts are suing to enforce a federal

statute—namely, the IDEA—they must show that the IDEA

creates a right of action authorizing them to sue the

Department of Education for the relief they seek. See Lake

Wash. Sch. Dist. No. 414 v. Office of Superintendent of Pub.

Instruction, 634 F.3d 1065, 1067–68 (9th Cir. 2011). The

only provision of the IDEA that could conceivably do that is

20 U.S.C. § 1415(i)(2)(A), which provides as follows:

1 For that reason, we disagree with the Department of Education’s

suggestion that the suits are moot, notwithstanding the fact that in one case

the Department agreed not to enforce its decision, and in the other the

school district has already complied with the Department’s decision. The

claims alleged by the school districts “fall within the ‘capable of

repetition, yet evading review’ exception to the mootness doctrine.” 

Porter v. Jones, 319 F.3d 483, 489 (9th Cir. 2003); see also Rosemere

Neighborhood Ass’n v. EPA, 581 F.3d 1169, 1174–75 (9th Cir. 2009).

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FAIRFIELD-SUISUN USD V. CAL. DEP’T OF EDUC. 7

(2) Right to bring civil action

(A) In general

Any party aggrieved by the findings and

decision made under subsection (f) or (k) who

does not have the right to an appeal under

subsection (g), and any party aggrieved by the

findings and decision made under this

subsection, shall have the right to bring a civil

action with respect to the complaint presented

pursuant to this section, which action may be

brought in any State court of competent

jurisdiction or in a district court of the United

States, without regard to the amount in

controversy.

The school districts concede that this provision does not

grant them an express right of action to pursue the claims

they have alleged. That concession is correct because these

cases originated in complaint resolution proceedings, which

are not proceedings under any of the subsections expressly

mentioned in § 1415(i)(2)(A).

Lacking an express right of action under § 1415, the

school districts ask us to glean from the terms of the statute

an implied right of action. That request is foreclosed by our

decision in Lake Washington. There, we confronted the same

issue presented here: “whether the IDEA confers upon a

school district the right to sue a state agency for its alleged

noncompliance with IDEA procedures.” 634 F.3d at 1067. 

In that case, a school district alleged that a state educational

agency routinely failed to adjudicate due process hearings

within the time limit set by 34 C.F.R. § 300.515(a)(1). After

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first concluding that the school district’s claim did not fall

within the express right of action created by 20 U.S.C.

§ 1415(i)(2)(A), we held that the school district had no

implied right of action either. Lake Wash., 634 F.3d at 1068. 

We observed that the IDEA’s procedural protections are

“intended to safeguard the rights of disabled children and

their parents,” and that Congress has “excluded local

educational agencies from enforcing state compliance with

the IDEA’s statutory provisions.” Id. at 1069. We therefore

joined several other circuits in holding that local educational

agencies have “no express or implied private right of civil

action under the IDEA to litigate any question aside from the

issues raised in the complaint filed by the parents on behalf

of their child.” Id. That meant the school district in that case

had no implied right of action “to challenge the State of

Washington’s compliance with the IDEA’s procedural

protections.” Id.

Our holding in Lake Washington controls the outcome

here, for the school districts in this case stand on even weaker

footing than did their counterpart in Lake Washington. The

IDEA provides school districts with an express right of action

to obtain judicial review of decisions rendered in due process

hearings (albeit one limited to contesting the issues raised in

the parents’ complaint). The case for recognizing an implied

right of action to contest alleged procedural violations in

connection with due process hearings is surely stronger than

the case for doing so with respect to complaint resolution

proceedings, since the IDEA makes no provision for judicial

review of those proceedings at all. If school districts lack an

implied right of action to challenge a State’s non-compliance

with the IDEA’s procedural protections in the context of due

process hearings, they also lack such an implied right of

action in the context of complaint resolution proceedings.

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FAIRFIELD-SUISUN USD V. CAL. DEP’T OF EDUC. 9

Whether parents have an implied right of action to sue

state educational agencies for violating the IDEA in the

context of complaint resolution proceedings is a question we

need not and do not decide.

AFFIRMED.

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